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FAITH AND IMMORTALITY 



FAITH AND 
IMMORTALITY 

A STUDY OF THE CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE OF THE LIFE TO COME 



BY 

E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A., D.D. 

PRINCIPAL OF THE YORKSHIRE UNITED INDEPENDENT COLLEGE, 
BRADFORD, ENGLAND 
AUTHOR OF " THE ASCENT THROUGH CHRIST," " FAITH AND VERIFICATION 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRISTIANITY TO A WORLD AT WAR," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

597-599 FIFTH AVENUE 

1917 



■y 






PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
BILLING. AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD, ENGLAND 



DEDICATED 

TO 

THE SPLENDID YOUTH OF BRITAIN 

WHO, AT THE CALL OF HONOUR AND DUTY, 

CAME FORWARD, IN THE HOUR OF THEIR COUNTRY'S NEED, 

TO FIGHT, TO SUFFER, AND TO DIE — 

THAT SHE MAY LIVE. 
* * * 

44 It is not growing like a tree 
In bulk doth make man perfect be, 
Or standing long, an oak three hundred year, 
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere. 
A lily of a day, 
Is fairer far in May. 
Although it fall and fade after a night, 
It is the plant and flower of light. 
In small proportions we just beauty see, 
And in short measures life may perfect be. " 

Ben Jonson. 



PREFACE 

GREAT events in history have always had a pro- 
found effect on the development of religious as 
well as philosophical thought; and there can be no 
doubt that the present war, which is shaking the fabric 
of modern civilisation to its foundations, will issue in 
many as yet undreamt-of changes of perspective and 
emphasis in Theology. It is too soon to forecast the 
issue in many directions; but already many pressing 
problems are demanding fresh treatment. Among 
these none is more urgent than the question of human 
destiny in the world to come. 

Among the reasons for the decay of the influence of 
the Christian pulpit during the past generation, one is 
undoubtedly the fact that the doctrine of immortality has 
so largely lost its place at the heart of the Christian 
message. Preachers nowadays do not concern them- 
selves so much with what happens after death as with 
what happens to us here and now. The pains of Hell, 
the bliss of Heaven, the penalties and rewards which 
await us in the Unseen, have largely disappeared from 
amongst the incentives and warnings of the religious 
life, nor have any other taken their place. Life is dealt 
with as though it found its sanctions, rewards and pun- 
ishments within the circle of our earthly experience, and 
needed no future life to round off its incompleteness, 

vii 



viii Preface 

and bring its tremendous issues to fruition. This may 
be a healthy revulsion from the exaggerated "other- 
worldliness " of our forefathers, but it places the 
Christian preacher in a curious and anomalous position 
if pushed to extremes. For the emphasis now placed 
on the Apocalyptic element in our Lord's teaching has 
once more made the " otherworldly " aspect of religion 
a central part of its message ; and if the future life is to 
be left out of the preacher's programme, it means that he 
is called upon to urge his hearers to such a temper on 
the basis of considerations that have no relevance except 
to the life that now is. Such a phase of thought is 
Hebrew, not Christian, and was already outgrown when 
the Book of Job was written. Morality may conceiv- 
ably be justified, after a fashion, on the basis of one 
world. Religion unquestionably demands two. 

We believe that the true reason for this neglect is the 
chaotic condition to which the doctrine of the future life 
has been reduced by the inevitable movements of 
thought. The old beliefs have grown impossible, both 
exegetically and spiritually. Say what we will, the 
crude division of the race into the "saved" and the 
"lost," with no great indeterminate class between, no 
longer appeals to anyone as true; the timeworn appeals 
to the hearer based on that ground make no impression 
on the mind. The same is true of the literalistic inter- 
pretations given to the eschatological parables of our 
Lord, and to the pictures of doom in the Epistles and 
the Revelation of John. These no longer either frighten 
or inspire. It is instinctively felt that there is something 
unreal in the business. But so far no more believable 
doctrine of future destiny has taken their place. We 



Preface ix 

seem to be living eschatalogically between two worlds, 
" one dead, the other powerless to be born." 

The time has come when a fresh start may be made 
in the preaching of a truly evangelical and believable 
doctrine of the Last Things. This is due largely to the 
noble band of scholars who have recently recovered for 
us the true historical perspective of the revelation of the 
Life to Come in the Scriptures through the study of the 
Apocalyptic literature which fills the gap between the 
two Testaments. This has enabled us to realise how 
and why the Gospel has come down to us in the par- 
ticular form which it took, and thus to distinguish 
between its historical integument and its essential mes- 
sage. The same historical method enables us to see that 
there are many questions relating to the Unseen World 
which were not so much as thought of when the New 
Testament was written, and which therefore find no 
place there. For reasons comprehensible to the student 
of history, but which we need not enter into here, many 
of these questions seem never to have become living 
problems for faith till our own day. Take for instance 
the frightful loss of precious life in this inhuman war, 
which has brought bereavement already into millions of 
homes. What has become of these brave men, cut off in 
the flower of their age, and who have all died for others ? 
It is scarcely to the point to urge that this is no new 
perplexity ; that death in battle is no new fact ; that war 
and sudden death have been ubiquitous elements in 
human experience from the beginning ; that the problem 
of what has become of those suddenly cut off by war is 
as old as humanity. These are commonplaces. The 
time has come, however, when the old solution no longer 



x Preface 

satisfies the mind and heart of humanity; something 
in us which we cannot stifle rises in protest against it. 
To pass by the question therefore in silence, or to utter 
a few platitudes about it whose meaning has long lost 
their force, is to be guilty of cruelty as well as negli- 
gence; and it is no wonder that many aching hearts, 
anxious for what light there is, but hearing nothing to 
the point on a question that gives them untold secret 
agony, take refuge in a stony agnosticism, and often 
cease attending public worship altogether. 

These considerations give the clue to the particular 
purpose of this book. It has no novel doctrine of destiny 
to propound ; but it strives to clear the ground of the silt 
and rubble of non-essential beliefs concerning human life 
beyond the grave which have come down with the stream 
of time, and which even to-day make it difficult to con- 
struct a purely Christian doctrine of the Future Life — by 
which we mean one that flows centrally from the revela- 
tion of God's Holy Fatherhood, and of all men's poten- 
tial Sonship in Jesus Christ. Great emphasis has been 
laid in the text on the doctrine of Future Probation as a 
corollary of these two determinative doctrines. Few 
now maintain the traditional position that death auto- 
matically determines the destiny of every man ; but there 
are few who frankly face the real alternative to that crude 
and inhuman belief. 

The writer begs to make his acknowledgments to 
the following writers : to Professor McDougall for his 
thorough and able book on Body and Mind, which has 
been largely drawn upon in the text; to Professor 
Charles, who has done so much suggestive work in un- 
folding the significance of the Apocalyptic literature 



Preface xi 

which bridges the gap between the Old and New 
Testaments, and in helping us to distinguish the essence 
of the Christian doctrine of Eschatology from its first 
historic integument (A Critical History of the Doctrine 
of a Future Life, and Between the Testaments) ; to Pro- 
fessor Salmond for his masterly treatment of the subject 
from the older standpoint {The Christian Doctrine of 
Immortality) ; to Professor Adams Brown (The Christian 
Hope) ; and to Professor H. R. Mackintosh, for some help- 
ful hints in his fine little volume, full of spiritual insight, 
on Immortality and the Future. Other more occasional 
sources of indebtedness are referred to in the footnotes. 

It may be useful to point out that the main positions 
developed more at length in this book were first pre- 
sented in the form of lectures to a post-collegiate class 
for ministers in the spring term of this year. The 
writer owes much to the very useful discussions which 
followed these lectures, and to the criticisms to which 
they were then subjected. But for the encouragement of 
his brethren he would scarcely have had the boldness to 
challenge the wider audience here addressed. 

The writer's warm thanks are due to his colleagues, 
Dr. Grieve and Professor Price, for their help in revising 
proofs, in drawing up the indices and the analysis of 
contents, and in seeing the work through the press. 

E. GRIFFITH-JONES. 
The United College, 
Bradford, 

September, 1916. 



CONTENTS 



PAGES 

PREFACE - ix 

INTRODUCTION 

The unparalleled mortality of the Great War — Men of dis- 
tinction and of promise — Ordinary men — The question of 
their destiny forced upon us by (a) the scale of the tragedy ; 
(b) the sacrificial quality of their death — The question for 
faith — The modern revolt from older views — Need of restat- 
ing the doctrine of Immortality - - - 3-15 



PART I 

CRITICAL 

CHAPTER I. — THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 

The waning of the belief in immortality illustrated by (a) letters 
from and conversations with soldiers; (b) the questionnaire 
of the Society for Psychical Research — Probability of a 
revived hold on the doctrine which has been eclipsed by 
(a) the researches of physical and psychical science; (b) the 
confusion attendant on the new study of the Bible — e.g., by 
the Eschatological School ; (c) the appeal of other and present 
interests, " one world at a time " — The disastrous result on 
faith and conduct of a permanent loss of belief in im- 
mortality — The uselessness of alternative theories — e.g., 
(a) social immortality; (b) the immortality of influence; 
(c) the theory of eternal values - I 7-42 

xiii 



xiv Contents 

CHAPTER II. — SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY — I 

PAGES 

Do the ascertained facts of Science (i.e., ordered thought about 
phenomena) concerning the relations of soul and body- 
preclude the belief in the continued existence of the former ? 
— Primitive belief in a surviving spiritual principle — 
Attempts to explain the origin of this belief — Modern 
inquiries into the relation between soul and body — 
Cause and effect — The Physical School: soul is the result 
of bodily processes — The empirical argument and its limita- 
tions : the body possibly transmitter rather than creator — 
The a priori argument, or epiphenomenalism, and its defects 
— The Vitalist School : the body is the effect of the creative or 
formative activity of the soul — i.e., of a teleological, non- 
material energy - - - - - - 43-60 

CHAPTER III. — SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY — II 

Three theories of the identity of body and mind: (a) Parallelism 
or concomitance; (b) ultimate identity of mind and matter; 
(c) consciousness the only reality — Where such theories fail — 
The only satisfactory theory is one of the proximate dualism 
of mind and matter which permits interaction and suggests 
an underlying unity — viz., the activity of a personal God — 
Bearing of Evolution and of Psychology on this point — 
Theory of the subconscious personality — Investigations of 
the Society for Psychical Research — The existence of the soul 
— The partial independence of Mind and Body — Survival of 
the soul after bodily death — The modern scientific world has 
moved from the materialistic view of the origin of mind 61-82 

CHAPTER IV. — INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE 
NATURE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, AND THE LIMITA- 
TIONS OF EXPERIENCE 

Legitimacy of assumptions of faith and of inferences from the 
rationality of the Universe — Inferences from the theory of 
Evolution — Problems of personality: (a) "in man con- 
sciousness becomes self-consciousness "; (b) " instinct in the 
human personality almost vanishes in reason " ; (c) " in Man 
spontaneity of movement develops into freedom of action"; 



Contents xv 

PAGES 

[d) " in Man the mere response to sense-stimulus rises into 
the power of creative thought and will " — Contrast between 
the human outlook and the contingencies of earthly experi- 
ence — What is Man ? — His victorious endowment of 
Thought ------ 83-107 



PART II 

HISTORICAL 

CHAPTER I. — THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT FOR 
IMMORTALITY, AS UNFOLDED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

I. The pre-prophetic conception of God; Jahweh the tribal deity 
— Attenuated survival of the soul — Sheol. — II. Prophetism 
— Enhanced conception of God — Influence of the Exile. — 

III. Higher value of the individual — His personal relation- 
ship with God — The New Covenant — Ezekiel and Job. — 

IV. The Messianic Kingdom and communal immortality. — 

V. Apocalyptic and the synthesis of individual and national 
eschatology — Resurrection of the righteous. — VI. Summary 
of Jewish thought — The coming Kingdom of God is 
(a) within man, (b) world-wide, (c) consummated in the 
world to come - ----- 109-137 

CHAPTER II. — JESUS AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

I. The person and teaching of Christ central for all New Testament 
thought. — II. The eschatological teaching of Jesus in the 
Synoptic Gospels is indirect and fragmentary, but pre- 
supposes life after death for all mankind — It is cast in 
apocalyptic moulds of temporary validity. — III. The regu- 
lative principle is the revelation of God in His redeeming 
activity — The three Old Testament notes repeated and em- 
phasised. — IV. Christ's teaching on the relative significance 
of the present life — Teaching on the Kingdom of God, the 
Parousia, Resurrection, Judgment, Paradise, Hades, and 
Gehenna. — V. Importance of distinguishing between form 
and spiritual significance of Christ's teaching on the future 
life ------- 139-162 



xvi Contents 

CHAPTER III. — THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND THE 
FUTURE LIFE 

PAGES 

I. Influence of the Resurrection of Jesus on the Apostolic Church. 
— II. The Second Advent Hope and its disappointment . 
and gradual transformation. — III. The teaching of Paul in 
i and 2 Thessalonians : (a) Anti-Christ and Apostasy; 

(b) Parousia; (c) Resurrection and destiny of the faithful — 
Modification of these views in i Corinthians, and again in 
2 Corinthians and Romans : extension of the Christian faith, 
nature of the resurrection body — The Epistles of the 
Captivity: cosmic significance of Christ: disappearance of 
apocalyptic phraseology — Summary of Pauline doctrine. — 
IV. Johannine and Petrine eschatology; Parousia, Resurrec- 
tion, and Judgment, present as well as future ; Value of the 
Book of Revelation; The spirits in prison. — V. Summary of 
teaching of Epistles: (a) The future life is the moral and 
spiritual issue of this life ; (b) The touchstone of character is 
the soul's attitude to the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ; 

(c) The forms of the eschatalogical hope vary, but the 
spiritual content is the same throughout. — VI. Concluding 
observations on the Biblical doctrine of Immortality. — 
Importance of the historical method - - 163-193 

PART III 
CONSTRUCTIVE 

CHAPTER I. — IMMORTALITY AND THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE 
OF THIS LIFE 

The supreme moral significance of the present life is a funda- 
mental postulate of the Christian faith — It solves many 
difficulties : (a) The scope of the present life is insufficient for 
the working out of the issues of human character; (6) The 
lesser ends of this life are dignified by the immortal hope; 
(c) Immortality justifies both the Christian doctrine of sin 
and its conception of " otherworldliness " — It is endorsed 
by the Christian doctrine of judgment, which is demanded 
both by the character of God and the nature of man - 195-2 11 



Contents xvii 

CHAPTER II. IMMORTALITY AND HUMAN PROBATION 

PAGES 

What are the limits of moral and spiritual probation for the 
human soul ? — Position of those who have had the oppor- 
tunity of accepting the Christian redemption — Some have 
accepted it, others have rejected it, others are still un- 
decided — The last-named are surely not beyond hope — 
Death does not end probation for all men — Position of those 
to whom the Gospel has not been presented : the heathen and 
many dwellers in Christian lands — The fresh emphasis given 
by the War — Conclusion : Probation must continue as long as 
moral personality persists - 213-236 

, .CHAPTER III. — TWO THEORIES OF FUTURE DESTINY: 
(a) UNIVERSAL RESTORATION 

Ancient and modern advocates of the theory of Universal 
Restoration— The argument from the revealed character of 
God and His purpose for humanity— -The " New Determin- 
ism " — -The theory fails to do justice to the nature of man as 
a free agents—The teaching of Jesus is on the whole against 
the theory— Yet it has served a useful purpose in (a) vin- 
dicating the character of God against the doctrine that man 
has no rights as regards the Creator ; (b) helping to reopen the 
question of human probation; (c) restoring the balance of 
thought after the gloomy outlook of the traditional 
theology ------ 237-254 

CHAPTER IV. — TWO THEORIES OF FUTURE DESTINY : 
(b) CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY 

Is the soul naturally immortal, or does it only attain im- 
mortality by an act of Divine grace ? — Ancient and modern 
supporters of Conditional Immortality — The religious convic- 
tion of Scripture is on the whole against them — The theory 
denies the possibility of future probation and weakens the 
conception of personality — The new biological argument as 
stated by McConnell examined and rejected — Net value of 
the Conditionalist theory - 255-279 



PAGES 



xviii Contents 

CHAPTER V. — A CONSTRUCTIVE VIEW 

Attempt at a constructive statement—Man is by nature im- 
mortal — The present life is one of probation, which is con- 
tinued hereafter in heaven and hell— The possibility of future 
betterment exists for all, though there is no certainty of 
Universal Restoration— Many, including the dead in battle, 
die unsaved but salvable— Of the finally unrepentant we have 
no clear vision— The objection that Future Probation 
is only another term for Purgatory— Prayers for the 
dead 28l -30i 

CHAPTER VI, — THE HEAVENLY STATE 

Contrast between the Apostolic Age and our own— Modern hesi- 
tancy due to the conception of the future life as a dis- 
embodied state— The resurrection of the body— The soul's 
need of an organ of expression— Concept of the spiritual body 

The soul may even now be shaping such a body — The New 

Testament conception of heaven : an embodied state in which 
there is mutual recognition and fellowship and a life of pro- 
gressively perfected ethical and spiritual relationships— 
In the heavenly state the highest energies of the redeemed 
are directed towards the salvation of the unredeemed, and 
there is ever-deepening and heightening fellowship with 
God as revealed in Jesus - 3°3-33 2 

index - 333'335 

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES- - - 33 6 "33 8 



FAITH AND IMMORTALITY 



" Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! 
Away, O soul ! hoist instantly the anchor ! 
Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out every sail ! 
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? 
Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with books long 

enough ? 
Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only, 
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me : 
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, 
And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all. 
O my brave soul! 
O, farther, farther sail ! 

O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? 
O, farther, farther sail!" 

Walt Whitman. 



FAITH AND IMMORTALITY 



INTRODUCTION 

" There's none of these so lonely and poor of old 
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. 
These laid the world away ; poured out the red 
Sweet wine of youth ; gave up the years to be 
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, 
That men call age, and those who would have been 
Their sons, they gave their immortality." 

Rupert Brooke. 

I 

THE great world-war of 191 4 has brought to pass, 
among other colossal evils, an unparalleled mor- 
tality among the rising generation of European nations. 
Already several millions of the ablest-bodied, most 
adventurous-spirited and eager-hearted of our young 
men have been hurled into a premature grave through 
the gateway of a violent death. In the ordinary course 
of nature the vast majority of these men would have 
lived many years, and would have done useful service 
in their day and generation. Some would have attained 
to influence and fame; a few would doubtless have 
touched the high-watermark of genius in their respective 
callings and professions; and the names of not a few 
would have gone down to posterity as among the bene- 
factors of mankind. 

Even in the early months of the year 191 5, an article 
appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, from the pen of Rev. 



4 Faith and Immortality 

Herbert W. Horwill, detailing some of the cost to 
humanity which the first six months of the war had 
caused. Within so short a period irreparable gaps had 
already been made in the ranks of rising scientists, 
artists, musicians, and thinkers, among the belligerent 
nations. One of the first German soldiers killed in the 
war was Dr. Bertheim, who, with Dr. Ehrlich, was the 
discoverer of salvarsan, one of the most potent remedies 
known to medicine. Of a distinguished young English 
doctor, serving as a Red Cross surgeon at the front, 
it was written in a newspaper, "Had his life been 
spared there is no height in his profession to which he 
might not have attained " ; of another, that an essay with 
which he won the prize at the London Hospital "was 
regarded as an earnest of a steady outflow of original 
work in the future"; and of a third, who received the 
V.C. for bravery in attending the wounded under fire, 
that he " had been investigating the problem of sleeping 
sickness in Africa, and was hoping soon to bring his 
work in it to a practical conclusion." Among dis- 
tinguished Germans, early newspaper paragraphs con- 
tained the following array of men of varied ability 
and usefulness— Professor Hermann Kriegsmann of 
Tubingen, a leading authority on criminal law; the 
jurist Carl Kornmann, who had recently been appointed 
to a full chair at Leipzig ; Dr. Heinrich Hermelink, Pro- 
fessor of Church History at Kiel; Dr. Ernst Heidrich, 
Professor of the History of Art at Basel; Dr. Ernst 
Sadler (a B.Litt. of Oxford), Professor of German 
Philosophy at Strassburg; Dr. Maxmilian Reinganum, 
Extraordinary Professor of Physics at Freiburg ; and 
many other leading thinkers and writers in their respec- 



Introduction 5 

tive departments of learning. Among well-known and 
rising Frenchmen the names of the following were 
already numbered among the fallen : Emile Raymond, 
a senator and surgeon of distinction ; Joseph Dechelehe, 
a leading writer on archaeology; Paul Philippe Cret, 
Professor of architectural design at the University of 
Pennsylvania ; Charles Peguy, the leader of a new school 
in French poetry and criticism, and his brilliant disciple, 
Ernest Pischari; Alfred Druin, another writer of dis- 
tinction; and Alberic Maguard, who had already pro- 
duced music pronounced to be among the best works 
for wind instruments since Mozart's time. It would be 
possible by this time to add a melancholy list of names 
of young men of almost equal distinction drawn from 
the casualty lists of all the nations engaged in this 
fratricidal war. Of the 20,000 French priests enrolled 
in the army, how many have by this time paid the 
penalty of their heroism with their lives ! And if, so 
far, our own losses have been less appalling, the casualty 
lists already contain not a few promising and some dis- 
tinguished names among our young men; and as the 
voluntary army which has been slowly gathering its 
units from every class of society, and especially from 
our universities and public schools, moves into the fir- 
ing-line, we are increasingly finding our own national 
life being bled of its most promising elements. We 
must add to the list of the dead who have already given a 
good account of themselves in definite directions, those 
others as yet too young to show their mettle in any 
channel of national service. If Gray's Elegy \ with its 
pathetic references of "mute inglorious Miltons" who 
have died before their genius had opportunity to mature 



6 Faith and Immortality 

had so much significance though suggested by a quiet 
country churchyard, what of the vast cemeteries that lie 
along the 1,500 miles of trenches in the east and west, the 
couth and south-east of this appalling battle-line ? We 
shall never know what poets and mystics, what scientists 
and philosophers, what prophets and preachers of the 
days to come have "fallen on sleep " before their time 
owing to this devastating struggle. Alas for the silent 
army of men who if they had had their chance to come 
to their own would have been the singers, orators, politi- 
cal leaders, philosophers, scientific thinkers, artists, 
saints of the coming days ! We shall never know what 
we have lost. 

And what of that vaster multitude of ordinary men 
who have fallen, who would have been their followers — 
the common humanity which is after all the most impor- 
tant because the most numerous section of the human 
race — the fathers and citizens, artists and artizans, 
workers in trade, business and the professions, who make 
up the average mass of our population? They were 
already doing useful work, at least most of them, and 
others were in the years of their novitiate. Many of 
them had formed their relationships in life, and some 
were knit into the organic fabric of society in a hundred 
different ways. They were already dear to some one, 
every man of them. Rivers of tears are flowing for 
them in obscure homes in city, town, hamlet, countryside 
in many lands; hearts are breaking — the hearts of 
mothers, fathers, sisters, lovers, wives : with their pass- 
ing, the light has gone out of many a life, and the joy 
out of innumerable homes. The spectacular tragedy of 
the fighting-line, brutal and bloody as it may be, is in a 



Introduction *j 

true sense less awful than the far-flung silent tragedy of 
these desolate and impoverished households scattered 
through the lands of Europe. So much love cheated of 
its joy, so much hope shorn of its brightness, so many 
years of loving sacrifice for the training, education, 
equipment for life of these lost sons of the race — all 
apparently in vain ! The horrible wastefulness of war 
in money, treasure, commodities, institutions, stored up 
through the thrift of generations of industry and self- 
discipline — what is it compared with the waste of pre- 
cious, promising, unfolding life, which it involves ? This 
world of ours will be a poor world in many ways, as 
we shall find when we sit down in the first sad days of 
peace to count our losses; and its most sorrowful loss 
will not be its maimed and halting civilisation, but its 
missing legions of brawny, brainy, high-spirited young 
men, who will be lying silent beneath the sod ere ever 
they had their opportunity of proving their full worth 
in their appointed work, and of living out their normal 
day of effort and achievement 



II 

The question inevitably presses home upon us in view 
of these facts, What has become of all these unrealised 
and prematurely ended lives? Have they been "cast 
as rubbish to the void " ? Are they gone out, like flames 
that flared up bravely only to fade suddenly into dark- 
ness? If not, where are they? What is their future, 
their fate, their destiny in the Silent Land into which 
they have so suddenly disappeared ? 

It may be said, these are no new questions, pertinent 



8 Faith and Immortality 

only to such a time as this. This war is not the first 
in history (may it be the last !), but the latest in a long 
series of sanguinary struggles which have incarnadined 
the pages of human history from the beginning, all of 
which have drunk deep of the blood of youth and man- 
hood. And even in times of peace we have had to 
bemoan the loss of many young lives prematurely cut off 
before their prime. Death comes to men at any age and 
has no respect of persons. And whenever it strikes 
young and promising souls to earth, these questions 
recur, and clamour for some kind of answer. There is 
nothing new under the sun — least of all in the spectacle 
of life cut short in its early morning, or its brilliant 
noon, as well as its quiet evening. 

There are, however, certain aspects of the vast holo- 
caust of young lives sacrificed on the altar of this 
wasteful war which make us ask such questions with a 
more poignant insistence than ever before. 

I. There is first the scale of the tragedy. There has 
never been a war on a front so vast; never one fought 
with such pitiless severity and indifference to life ; never 
one in which the proportion of fallen has been so high ; 
never one whose cost in life will be so disproportionate 
to any probable benefits to be afterwards reaped. The 
biggest battles of the past have lasted at best but a few 
days, whereas this war is a continuous battle that has been 
already (October, 191 6) protracted without any real pause 
or intermission, night or day, well over its second year. 
Other wars have slain their thousands, this war its mil- 
lions. Such colossal waste of human life has never been so 
much as dreamt of by the most bloodthirsty conquerors 
of the past. And though this is an aspect of our enigma 



Introduction 9 

that appeals to the imagination rather than the reason, 
which recognises no difference in kind between the 
problems of a skirmish and those of a campaign, yet — 
nay, because of, that very fact, it drives its spearhead 
deeper into our consciousness, and calls more loudly for 
an answer. 

2. Secondly, these lost lives, let us repeat, have died a 
sacrificial death in a very real and special sense. Speak- 
ing only of our own lost sons, they have fallen on the field 
of battle in order to preserve for us all that is precious in 
the heritage of the past, all that is noble in the possession 
of to-day, all that is promising in the future for our 
nation, and for the world at large. They went forth, 
consciously, into battle — the vast majority of them — to 
" make the bounds of freedom wider yet," and to estab- 
lish righteousness on the earth. Is it unnatural, is it not 
inevitable, that we should ask whether the fruit of their 
anguish is to be only for those who survive, and for 
those who shall come after? Is there to be for these 
men no element of compensation for the good they were 
instrumental in winning, no share in the Beyond in the 
benefits which they have died to purchase for us Here ? 
Is it enough for those who go into battle only to die, 
to pray with the speaker in George Eliot's poem, The 
Spanish Gipsy: 

11 O may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence ; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
Of miserable aims that end in self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues ?" 



10 Faith and Immortality 

That fine aspiration, I confess, has never seemed to me 
to satisfy the conditions and intuitions of human per- 
sonality. It is not adequate to the scale of our nature 
or the sacred rights of our self-hood. Rather do I feel 
that Tennyson has come nearer to the heart of thing* 
when he voices the aspiration of each soul sacrificed for 
great ends, that it should, somehow, somewhere (since 
it is never mere material for other ends, but an inalien- 
able end in itself) have its own share of the good it has 
helped to win for others, and enjoy at last its own con- 
scious share of good in the onward march of things. 

M Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong! 
Nay, but she aimed not at glory — no lover of glory, she. 
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky, 
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die !" 

When therefore we contemplate this moving vision of 
young lives hurried out of this world in the era not of 
attainment, but of promise; cut off in their prime, with 
their possibilities unfulfilled, their experience of life in- 
complete, their destinies unfinished : we are constrained 
to ask, with special emphasis, if they are all gone out of 
existence, What sort of a universe is this proved to be ? 
If we are to think of the longest life that has ever been 
lived on earth, that it is ludicrously inadequate for the 
realisation of the resources of human personality, what 
of these lives thus nipped in the bud ? Are we not 
forced to believe that if there be a God at all, and if 
supremely He be such an One as we can describe as the 
" God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," then for 
these young men the too brief span of life they have 



Introduction 1 1 

enjoyed here cannot be their all. They were surely 
made for more and higher experiences than they here 
enjoyed, and He who implanted in them the thirst for 
life that fills all young hearts will not disappoint 
them of their instinctive longing for more and fuller life 
in the Beyond. Else is this world a medley of loose 
ends indeed, a prologue with no drama to follow, a futile 
and mocking farce " full of sound and fury " (as Mac- 
beth puts it) " signifying nothing !" 

And there is something in the very thought of a great 
sacrifice for others, when carried to the point of surren- 
dering life itself for the common good, that proclaims 
the deathless nature of such souls as are capable of it. 
We cannot, after the fashion of Mohammedanism, claim 
that the very act of death on the battlefield is in itself a 
guarantee of everlasting bliss. The solemn issues of 
character are too complex and far reaching to be deter- 
mined at the price of a single act, however supreme and 
glorious it may be. Life must be judged as a whole, 
and the judgment must be strictly qualitative; it must 
be searching and just as well as pitiful. It is, however, 
difficult to believe that because many of these men were 
spiritually immature, and some vicious, and a few vile, 
their eternal destiny has been suddenly and irrevocably 
fixed at the moment of such a death. No man could 
possibly damn to eternal perdition another who had 
given his life voluntarily for him ; it is still more impos- 
sible to believe that the God whom Jesus revealed could 
do such a thing. We cannot perhaps pierce the veil 
that hides from us the world to come, but Faith as well 
as Hope has her anchor within that veil; and if the 
judgment bar before which our soldier-dead will have 



12 Faith and Immortality 

to give an account of the deeds done in the body is that 
of Christ, it is the same Christ who preached of the 
Prodigal's return, and forgave sins, and redeemed the 
repentant sinner, even on the Cross. May we not be 
sure that the same love and righteousness, the same pity 
and grace, are to be found beyond the grave, as we have 
found on this side ? 

Ill 

Impressive, however, as these rapidly summarised sug- 
gestions may appear to be, they must not be taken for 
granted without a more sure proof than the eager 
intuitions of our better nature. It is not thus that our 
forefathers settled their problem of the Future. Bowing 
their very souls before the historic revelation of God in 
Jesus Christ, and finding in the Bible, and especially in 
the New Testament, and more especially still in the 
ipsissima verba of the Master's teaching their material 
for the doctrine of destiny and doom, they were, sorrow- 
fully enough doubtless, and with many a tendency to 
shrink back, yet none the less inevitably, led by their 
premises to the following conclusions : first, that death 
ends all probation for human souls; secondly, that it 
fixed finally and for ever their eternal destiny; and 
thirdly, that this destiny is determined by their con- 
scious attitude in this life to the offer of salvation made 
in and through Jesus Christ. Unlimited hope for the 
worst sinner on this side of the grave ; absolute fixity of 
condition and destiny for every soul according to its 
spiritual state " in the article and moment " of death — 
this is the faith which has come down to us from our 
Puritan forefathers, but from which most of us in this 



Introduction 1 3 

generation have revolted with fear and trembling, if not 
with disgust and loathing. It is to be feared, however, 
that few of us have seriously faced the issues involved, 
or come to another conclusion along careful and cogent 
lines of thought. The subject of future destiny is at 
present in a state of confusion, if not of chaos. There is 
no reasoned theory of the Last Things in possession of 
the Christian consciousness. We are in this matter 
hovering between two worlds, " one dead, one powerless 
to be born." The crude, pragmatic view of heaven and 
hell, held fearfully but obstinately by our forefathers, has 
lost its hold on us. Most of us confess more or less 
frankly that we can no longer believe in it; others, 
seeing no alternative, and therefore perplexed and 
troubled in mind, have tried their best not to think 
about it at all; still others, even among Christian 
believers, are openly agnostic, and hold that we have 
no evidence whatever of what happens to the soul after 
death, and there they leave the matter. 

All this is very unsatisfactory, if not mischievous to 
the interests of faith. The whole fabric of Christian 
thought in all generations down to the present has been 
built on the postulate of a future life, apart from v/hich 
its teaching about this life would lose its consistency 
and its reasonableness. If once it were convincingly 
proved that death ends our existence, that in the words 
of the ancient preacher, "there is one event to the 
righteous, and to the wicked; to the good, and to the 
clean and to the unclean ; to him that sacrificeth, and to 
him that sacrificeth not; as is the good so is the 
sinner . . . i n then we should have to revise our whole 
1 Eccles. ix. 2. 



14 Faith and Immortality 

scheme of values, radically reconstruct our ethics, and 
change our life-programme from centre to circumference. 
True, many cling to the Christian ideal, and fashion 
their lives according to the laws and precepts of the 
Gospel, long after they have lost belief in the personality 
of God, the Divinity of Jesus, and the life everlasting; 
but this is a noble inconsistency, in virtue of which the 
standards of conduct survive the loss of creed. Some 
of the great Victorian Agnostics — men of the stamp of 
Huxley, Darwin, W. K. Clifford, Harrison — were thus 
conspicuously Christian in the tone and temper of their 
lives. It must, however, be borne in mind that their 
habitual springs of conduct had been irrevocably fixed 
ere they became Agnostic in religious belief, and could 
be logically justified only on the basis of the Faith in 
which they had been brought up before they had 
theoretically repudiated it. Such a position is not likely 
to be repeated in the second and third generations, as 
the history of families who have departed from the 
Faith abundantly proves. If therefore the doctrine of 
immortality is vital to the permanence and healthy 
activity of the Christian Faith, it is of the utmost impor- 
tance that it should be restated in a way that shall com- 
mand the happy consent of the intelligence as well as 
the heart of believing men and women. It is the aim 
of the present writer to attempt such a restatement in 
this volume. 

Before such a task is attempted, however, certain pre- 
liminary questions must be dealt with. It has, for 
instance, been widely assumed that science has closed 
the door to the possibility of believing in the survival 
of the soul of bodily death. It is affirmed by a certain 



Introduction 1 5 

school of Biblical critics that some of the passages in 
which Jesus seems to be dealing most directly with the 
life beyond have really no reference whatever to such a 
subject, but deal only with what must happen at the 
so-called " second coming " of the Son of Man. And it 
is affirmed by others that our Lord's teachings on this 
mysterious and difficult matter are so coloured and 
dominated by the current ideas of His time that they 
form no integral part of His revelation of God and Man 
in the future world. These and other problems must 
be as far as possible cleared out of our way before we 
can deal fruitfully with the central problem itself. We 
shall try to handle them frankly and reverently, with 
profound respect for all who differ from us in our con- 
clusions, and with the single aim of easing the pathway 
of faith and of ministering to the comfort and strength- 
ening of those of our fellow-countrymen who are filled 
with loving solicitude or painful uncertainty as to what 
the Christian Faith really teaches us concerning the 
fact and the conditions of the life " beyond the veil." 



PART I 
CRITICAL 

CHAPTER I 
THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 



THE BLIND SUMMIT 

"[A Viennese gentleman, who had climbed the Hoch-Konig 
without a guide, was found dead in a sitting posture near the 
summit, on which he had written * It is cold, and clouds shut 
out the view.'] 

So climbs the child of ages of desire, 

Man, up the steeps of thought, and would behold 

Yet purer peaks, touched with unearthlier fire 
In sudden prospect, virginally new; 

But on the lone, last height he sighs * 'Tis cold, 
And clouds shut out the view.' 

Ah, doom of mortals vexed with phantoms old, 
Old phantoms that waylay us and pursue — 

Weary of dreams — we think to see unfold 
Th' eternal landscape of the Real and True; 

And on our Pisgah can but write : ' 'Tis cold, 
And clouds shut out the view.' " 

William Watson. 

" Guard the fire within ! 
Bright else and fast the stream of life may roll, 
And no man may the other's hurt behold; 
Yet each will have one anguish — his own soul 
Which perishes of cold." 

Matthew Arnold : Progress. 



CHAPTER I 
THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 

MANY writers have recently referred to the wide- 
spread waning of interest in the future life which 
characterises the present as contrasted with previous 
generations. The belief in immortality has unques- 
tionably been rapidly losing its hold on all classes of 
society during the past half century. When those of 
us now in middle life were young, the question of our 
eternal destiny was a very live and burning one. It 
not only had a keen interest for the mind, but it exer- 
cised a profound influence on the will. Many of us 
remember how unfailingly, if a school-mate or personal 
friend died suddenly through sickness or accident, the 
occasion was improved by parent or pastor or Sunday- 
school teacher ; how we were made to feel the uncertainty 
of life, the possible imminence of death at any age, the 
call to decision ere it was too late. Our friend, we were 
told, had gone to meet his God, and his eternal destiny 
was already settled according to his response towards 
the offer of salvation made to him during his brief 
opportunity on earth. Many can trace their conversion 
to the effect of the loss of a relative or companion in 
those far-off days in forcing them to decide the great 
question of their relation to Him who was to be their 
Judge as well as their Saviour. The writer well 

19 



20 Faith and Immortality 

remembers spending a whole night, when about eight 
years old, in anguished questioning as to what would 
become of him if he were suddenly called (as a class- 
mate had just been called) " into eternity." 



How stands it to-day with the rising generation? 
Have we taught our children, as our parents taught us, 
the solemn issues of life and death? Is faith in an 
immortal life beyond the grave bedded into their con- 
sciousness, and made into one of the governing motives 
in all their doings and dealings? Early in the war a 
newspaper published a pathetic letter recently written 
by a Welsh lad to his parents in premonition of his 
probable death in battle, which was found on his dead 
body next day : 

" My Dear Mam and Dad, — 

" To-morrow I am to take part in a battle, and I 
have a strange presentiment that something is going to 
happen. Therefore I consider it a part of my honour- 
able duty to write you a last letter. Should I lose my 
life in to-morrow's battle, my dear Mam and Dad, 
should I be one of those on the Roll of Honour, I want 
you to banish all grief or sorrow for me and keep up 
your heads as true British parents. Show those around 
you that you can share the sacrifice, and show that it 
is as much your duty as it is mine to face the enemy 
and, if needs be, to sacrifice my life. 

* Dears, your boy cannot die a more glorious death 
than to fall with his face towards the enemy, and die 
with the secure consciousness that you, the parents he 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 2 1 

loves, will be proud of him even in death. I shall die 
in peace. My only desire is that you will just smile 
upon me, and say, ' Well done V 

H Your ever loving old boy, 

" Tom." 

This is a beautiful and suggestive letter, full of filial 
affection, high-minded, artless and 9 sincere. This lad 
was evidently profoundly religious; he had probably 
been brought up in a home where the natural affections 
mingled happily with the larger current of Divine grace. 
Yet in speaking of death there is no explicit reference 
to any hereafter. The faith is there, but it is implicit; 
there is no suggestion that the solemn issues involved 
were, as such, present to the writer's mind. 1 And we 

1 Since writing the above the writer has received other testi- 
monies to the same effect. This position is corroborated also 
in the following extract from the British Weekly, May i-i, 1916 : 

" A Soldier Facing Death. 
" We have received the following very touching and signi- 
ficant letter from the father of the writer. The father wrote 
to his son in view of the rumoured advance and its dangers to 
our brave soldiers. The son was always a reticent lad, and the 
father writes us : ' This answer to my letter is so characteristic 
of the soldier lads that I thought you might like to see it and 
use it in your columns.' We are very glad to do so. We are 
confident that it expresses the deeper mind of the great majority 
of our soldiers. 

" ' B.E.F., France. 

M ' Your letter gave me much food for thought, and it touches 
on a topic about which a man is very loth to talk, though under 
the existing circumstances it concerns every one of us on active 
service very much. The greater part of every soldier's time he 
is in shelled areas, where death may come like a bolt from the 
blue. We realise this, say little about it, keeping such unwel- 
come subjects well in the background, and making the best of 



22 Faith and Immortality 

cannot help believing that this letter is symptomatic 
of a great change that has passed over the religious 
world during the last thirty or forty years. We would 
not say that there has been any widespread loss of 
belief in survival after death in religious circles, but the 
moral value of the belief has been obscured, and as a 
consequence the belief itself has receded from the fore- 
ground to the background of life. I am not sure, 
indeed, that it would be wrong to say that it can now be 
best described as a vague hope rather than a confident 
faith full of moral urgency and spiritual stimulus. 

Professor Mellone, in his very helpful book on The 
Immortal Hope, points out that " a shrinking from 
annihilation is distinctive and natural to humanity "; 
but Dr. Osier, in his " Ingersoll " lecture on " Science 
and Immortality," testifies strongly to the waning of the 
positive faith in survival in modern times. He divides 
modern men into three classes on this question — (i) 
"An immense majority who live practically uninflu- 
enced by it, except in so far as it ministers to a whole- 

this extraordinary life. Personally, should anything happen, 
I am quite prepared, and do not mind what sacrifice is to be 
made. In the fortune of war it is to be or it is not to be, and 
lucky is the man who comes through intact. What worries 
the soldier most is not particularly his own welfare, but the 
feelings of those he has left behind him. Tommy's cheerful- 
ness is of no artificial nature, and it often warms my heart to 
think that I am a Britisher when I see the conduct of our men 
under the most trying circumstances, and my only hope is that 
my own behaviour is worthy of my name and pedigree. " The 
one shall be taken and the other left." It is peculiar, but 
everyone thinks he will be a lucky one, your humble included. 
" ' I have not written in this strain before. In fact, I dislike 
doing so very much, but I thought you would like to know 
exactly what my views were/ " 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 23 

sale dissonance between the inner and outer life, and 
diffuses an atmosphere of general insincerity." (2) A 
second group, larger perhaps, to-day than ever before 
in history, who put the supernatural altogether out of a 
man's life, and regard the hereafter as only one of the 
" many inventions " he has sought out for himself. (3) 
A third group, ever small and select, who lay hold with 
the anchor of faith upon eternal life as the controlling 
influence in this one. 1 And this, he suggests, is a 
diminishing class. 

By way of testing these statements I have talked with 
many soldiers who have been to the Front, and ques- 
tioned them as to the attitude of their comrades — and 
their own — to the possibility they are constantly facing 
of being suddenly called into the next world. Does 
such a possibility fill them with fear or apprehension? 
Nearly all the answers I have had have been disquiet- 
ingly in the negative. The majority do not seem to 
think about it at all. They " know nothing about it " — 
such is the general attitude — and they just " take their 
chance." Probably this testimony is more agnostic than 
the real facts warrant. Young men nowadays are 
strangely and obstinately reticent as to their inner life. 
Except when the barriers of silence break down in rare 
moments of confidence with one another, they say 
nothing of what goes on in the secret chambers of 
imagery within. That does not mean that they do not 
think of these things ; and probably they believe a great 
deal more than they publicly confess to each other, or — 
possibly — to themselves. While, however, we would not 
draw too definite a conclusion from such testimonies, we 

1 Pp. 16, 17. 



24 Faith and Immortality 

still cannot but believe that the thought of a future life 
occupies a very much smaller place in the minds of the 
youthful generation than it did a generation ago. This 
personal impression is borne out by the systematised 
enquiries of some of our foremost thinkers. At the 
beginning of the present century a questionnaire was 
issued by the American branch of the Society for 
Psychical Research under the title Human Sentiment 
with Regard to a Future Life. Out of the 3,321 replies 
received, 22 per cent, alone answered affirmatively the 
second enquiry on the list — " Do you desire a future 
life whatever the conditions may be?" — suggesting (if 
the replies may be taken as fairly representative of 
average human opinion) that only one person in five 
would be willing to begin another state of existence 
under the " fighting conditions " of the present state. 
But the most significant question was the third in the 
list — " Do you feel the question of a future life to be of 
urgent importance to your mental comfort?" — and to 
this 1,807 persons answered categorically in the negative, 
"adding (often decidedly), 'Not at all/ 'Not in the 
least/ 'Never think about it/" 1,314 (a little more than 
33 per cent.) replying in the affirmative. Dr. Schiller 
apparently considers this response to be fairly repre- 
sentative of the general situation, and thinks it indicates 
that the actual interest taken in a future life is incom- 
mensurate with its spiritual importance, and that the 
question does not loom so large on our mental horizon 
as tradition has assumed. " The apparent absence of 
any widespread spiritual distress is certainly very 
striking and surprising, though here again this might 
perhaps have been inferred from the surface indications 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 25 

of general placidity and contentment," 1 and Professor 
Schiller apparently believes this state of things to be 
suggestive of the permanent attitude in all ages of men 
and women towards the future life. This may be so as 
regards the " irreligious " classes in every generation, but 
what is peculiar to the present time is that the thought 

1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, October, 
1904, pp. 416-453. Professor Schiller's results, however, are 
not borne out by the evidence deduced from the long corre- 
spondence about the same time in the Daily Telegraph on the 
subject " Do we Believe ?" which was summarised thus by the 
editor of that paper at the close of the discussion : 

M I should imagine that so far as this correspondence reflects 
the mind of the English people, the believers must be ten or 
twelve times as numerous as the doubters, and this, too, in an 
age which has evidently been too rashly styled a sceptical one. So 
far as my original question is concerned I maintain that no one 
who looks at existing conditions can fail to observe that the 
majority of men, so far from thinking of another world, are 
quite content to limit their ambitions and desires to the present. 
Perhaps even the official teachers of religion have somewhat 
shifted their ground on this matter. I am told that the clergy- 
men preach a good deal more of the duties of our mortal 
sphere and our every-day obligations to our neighbours, of the 
tasks which a human being of threescore and ten years has to 
accomplish, than their predecessors did half a century ago. In 
my youth the topics of most sermons were the happy conditions 
of the blest, the miserable conditions of the damned, the con- 
stant assertion that this world was a vale of tears. If the 
prospect is now changed, if by tacit consent we have put away 
from our thoughts the possibility of another sphere of existence, 
the reason is probably not so much concerned with the Christian 
religion as with the progress of rationalism and the dictates of 
philosophic moralists. Or perhaps it would be true to say that 
a good many moral teachers — Socrates, Buddha, and even 
Christ — often show themselves anxious to repress speculations 
about the future, in order that the duties of the present may 
be properly discharged. Other-worldliness is therefore at a 
discount." 



26 Faith and Immortality 

of another existence beyond the grave has receded from 
the foreground of consciousness in the case of religious 
people as well. It is no longer one of the dominating, 
determining motives of conduct It has become a vague 
sentiment rather than an operative and inspiring creed. 

II 

Is it possible to account for this general and rapid 
loss of vitality in a doctrine which has hitherto been 
one of the prime postulates of Christian thought from 
the beginning? Amid all the changes and modifica- 
tions of the Christian creed this particular tenet has 
never before lost its place among the operative beliefs 
of Christendom, though the forms in which it has been 
held have varied greatly in different ages and among 
the various Churches and sects. Yet within the last half 
century it has been steadily waning in all civilised 
countries; our own indeed is but the last to fall under 
influences which in France and Germany have for a 
much longer time been sapping at the foundation of 
the belief. 

It is very difficult to account adequately for such 
phenomena, though many superficial reasons, cogent so 
far as they go, but not penetrating very deeply into the 
subsoil of the spiritual life, can be adduced for them. 
The conditions governing the rise and decadence of 
religious beliefs have never been thoroughly studied; 
here indeed is a chapter in spiritual psychology not yet 
written. There are clearly hidden factors at work. 

14 We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire which in the heart resides; 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 
In mystery our soul abides." 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 27 

There are ages in which certain doctrines previously 
neglected, or lying on the circumference of conscious- 
ness, suddenly become central and all-dominating; fierce 
controversies range round them; their acceptance or 
rejection is made a matter of prime spiritual import- 
ance; prison, boot and thumb screw are brought into 
requisition, and men cheerfully burn each other to death 
according to their attitude towards tenets which to after 
ages become matters of mild indifference, even of amused 
curiosity. Of many of these ages of controversy we 
may say that they mark organic stages in the history 
of dogma, which, having once been passed, determine 
the settled faith of the Church for all time; but this is 
by no means true of all. It is quite impossible for us to 
enter into the points of view of belligerent theologians 
who once fiercely wrestled in historic councils over what 
appear to us as matters of no vital importance to any- 
one. All we can say is that the issues once so vividly 
alive are dead for ever; we are interested in other and 
what seem to us to be more important things — which 
possibly to posterity may appear to be equally trivial 
and evanescent. 

This, however, can scarcely be said of the belief in 
question. The problem "if a man die, shall he live 
again ?" is no passing craze : it touches the very foun- 
tains of life itself; and that such a belief should ever 
become a matter of final indifference or even of minor 
import to creatures whose master-passion is an inordinate 
love of life and hatred of extinction, is surely one of the 
wonders of religious psychology. Such a state of mind 
can hardly be permanent ; and the pressure of loss upon 
the world's thoughts and affections caused by the 



28 Faith and Immortality 

devastations of this colossal war will probably — as one 
of its incidental effects — bring back in a new and vital 
sense the desire to come to a more intelligent and settled 
conviction on the great question whether death is the 
end of all, and, if not, what is the nature, and what are 
the conditions, of the life beyond. 

Ill 

It will, however, not be unfruitful to consider some 
of the more obvious conditions of thought which have 
contributed to the eclipse of this faith during the last 
half century in the history of English thought. 

i. It has been freely stated that the belief in immor- 
tality has been finally disposed of by science. In the 
first place, the Copernican astronomy has so altered the 
position of the earth in the starry system, reducing 
it from the centre of creation to a mere outlying pin- 
point in space, unsymmetrically placed even as to its 
own solar centre; and the theory of evolution has 
stretched so inconceivably the pathway of time and 
the story of terrestrial life, that for one insignificant 
order of creatures in so spacious a universe, and belong- 
ing to so interminable a life-series, to claim survival 
after death in a higher state of existence is to exaggerate 
our self-importance to the point of absurdity. Next, 
the science of psycho-physics (which deals with the 
relation of body and mind) has emphasised the close 
connection of these two aspects of our complex existence 
to such an extent as to make it difficult to believe that 
the mental factor is capable of survival apart from 
the other. Thirdly, the study of abnormal psychical 
phenomena has tended to resolve the " indissoluble unit 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 29 

of the personality " (which is the final argument of 
the believing philosopher in favour of survival) into 
a mere bundle of " selves " which fall into hopeless 
separateness when the conserving bond of our normal 
psychological conditions is slackened or broken by 
mental and organic disease; which strongly suggests 
that when death puts an end to the organism there 
is no central self left to survive. There are many 
variants to the above negative arguments against the 
doctrine of immortality, but these are the main lines 
of attack. The net result has been a far-reaching influ- 
ence in breaking down what in earlier generations was 
an unquestioned religious and moral postulate, that 
the most precious and significant element in human 
nature, the "sour' or "spirit," is essentially immortal. 

2. The traditional belief was also attacked in flank y 
as it were, from the religious standpoint, by a large 
group of theological and critical writers who challenged 
the old belief that the soul's eternal destiny was settled 
irrevocably at death; some, like Rev. Edward White, 
Professor Petavel-Oliff, Dr. Dale, and Prebendary Row, 
affirming the doctrine of Conditional Immortality; 
others, like Rev. Baldwin Brown, Archdeacon F. W. 
Farrar, Rev. G. A. Gordon and a number of American 
Universalists, reinterpreting our Lord's parables of 
Judgment in the interests of the theory of Universal 
Restoration, or the Larger Hope ; while, from the ultra- 
orthodox point of view, we have had a host of hetero- 
geneous theorists, Pre- and Post-Millenarians, Latter- 
Day Saints, Second Adventists, aggravating the con- 
fusion of tongues, and introducing a sense of chaos 
into the general mind as to whether there is any 



36 Faith and Immortality 

authoritative or even recognisable Christian doctrine 
on the subject at all. This state of things was 
brought to a climax by the rise of the Eschatological 
School of thought which claims to have revolu- 
tionised the interpretation of our Lord's teaching con- 
cerning the Last Things, contending that most of 
it was apocalyptic in character, and that none of 
the Judgment parables, etc., have primarily anything 
to do with the problem of immortality as such, being 
spoken of what would happen not at the moment of 
death or in the Great Hereafter, but at the Second 
Coming of the Son of Man, and the establishment of the 
Kingdom of God on earth. Science and theology during 
the last quarter of a century have thus co-operated from 
different points of view in disturbing the sure founda- 
tions of the earlier belief in a future state; the first by 
making it difficult to believe that the " soul " can survive 
the body, or whether there was a "soul" to survive at all; 
and the second by bringing the scriptural evidence as to 
what follows death into uttermost disorder and confu- 
sion. It is no wonder that in face of these contrary 
winds of doctrine the light began to flicker and burn 
dimly on the altar of the Immortal Hope. 

3. Meanwhile, other interests of an absorbing kind 
appealed to the sensibilities of civilised mankind. 
Nothing has created a more vivid revulsion from the 
traditional view of this life as a mere preface to the life 
to come, than the transformation in our earthly environ- 
ment created by the discoveries of science. Our fore- 
fathers spoke of this life as a pilgrimage to another, 
spent in an alien and unfriendly world, beset with much 
uncertainty, misfortune, calamity, and manifold sorrow, 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 3 1 

to be borne with such patience as we could command, 
and from which death — if a man lived in the fear of God 
— was a kindly deliverer. How profoundly this view 
of our terrestrial life had penetrated into the religious 
consciousness of the world is abundantly testified by our 
hymnology down to quite recent times. Puritanism had 
killed the joie de vivre of primitive and later times; a 
sombre veil was drawn over the natural sources of hap- 
piness ; the world was " a dreary wilderness," a " vale 
of tears," a brief and painful passage from birth to the 
emancipating gateway of death. True, this depressing 
theory of existence never quite succeeded in killing the 
native springs of happiness in human nature; but it 
succeeded in making men almost ashamed of their joys 
and pleasures, by setting a ban on the instinct for enjoy- 
ment, and pointing with everwarning finger to the 
shallowness and evanescence of earthly sources of satis- 
faction. The wonderful extension of human power over 
the outward conditions of life during the nineteenth cen- 
tury gradually dispelled the dreary and unreal shadow 
which thus checked the natural impulse of the heart to 
make the best of this life. The object of the secularist 
civilisation of the nineteenth century (as the writer has 
pointed out in a recent volume) was to improve this 
planet as a home for man, so that he might spend his few 
years of existence on it to the best advantage. " Hav- 
ing discovered the secret of knowledge, and of the con- 
trol of the physical forces, the so-called progressive 
peoples have been gradually mastering many devices 
for emancipating the race from its long-inherited ills 
and disabilities. Matter has gradually grown plastic 
under the hand of the chemist and the physicist. Inven- 



32 Faith and Immortality 

tion has elaborated machines for the manufacture of 
countless contrivances which minister to the bodily com- 
fort, the social convenience, and the political expansion 
of human society. . . . Commerce and intercourse have 
become worldwide; wealth, fabulous in amount, and 
exhaustless in prospect, has accumulated at an ever- 
increasing rate; even poverty has become a problem 
nearing solution if only men could be got to consent 
to the better distribution of the wealth which all have 
helped to make. There has thus seemed to be no reason 
on the surface of things why this earth, which has been 
the theatre of man's severe struggles to make it a 
tolerable dwelling-place, should not presently become a 
very desirable residence for a race bent on making the 
best of their brief opportunity." 1 

One of the results of this marvellous conquest of life's 
environment in the interests of humanity has been to 
shift the centre of interest from the Life Beyond to 
that which now is. The resources of our present exist- 
ence have unfolded in a magical way; privileges 
formerly enjoyed by the few are now enjoyed by the 
many; it may be said without exaggeration that the 
lot of the poor man to-day is far richer in sources of 
satisfaction, in wealth of experience, in possibilities of 
expansion, than was the case with the richest classes a 
century ago. To those bent on physical enjoyment, 
even a moderate wage furnishes enough margin of pur- 
chasing power to enable them to enjoy a modicum of 
the pleasures of the drama, the cinema, the race-course, 
the holiday to the seaside, not to speak of the coarser 

1 The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War, pp. 35, 
37. 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 33 

joys of eating and drinking to repletion. For the intel- 
lectual, all the wonderland of literature has been made 
accessible through the public library and the cheap 
press. To the ambitious, facilities of self-education are 
many and easily accessible, and manifold avenues of 
social improvement and business success have been 
opened up to the able and determined spirit. For those 
whose "nature is touched to fine issues" pathways of 
practical service for their fellow-men are many and full 
of opportunity and promise. And for those who are 
natural idealists, and possessed by an altruistic pas- 
sion of the highest kind, there are countless chances of 
self-forgetful activity through which they can assuage 
their longing to immolate themselves for the unfor- 
tunate, the down-trodden, the sinful and the lapsed, 
whether in the interests of the living, or of future ages. 
Contrast this with the narrow and pent-up lives of our 
forefathers who, with all their instincts for expansion, 
and self-realisation and service, were caged-in by 
cramping limitations, and condemned for the most part 
to a round of monotonous duties from which there was 
little opportunity of escape or even of variation. Is it 
any wonder that they could not help viewing their 
earthly lot as a kind of prison-house, from which death 
would presently emancipate them, that their souls might 
escape into a more congenial and adequate spiritual 
environment ? And is it any wonder that we> to whom 
emancipation has so largely come in this life, should, 
at least for the time, tend to lose interest in a pro- 
blematical life to come, and concentrate our thoughts 
and energies on the wonderful possibilities of our pre- 
sent stage of existence? Here at least is a world full 

3 



34 Faith and Immortality 

of immediate resources, both for enjoyment and for 
achievement; let us make the best of it, and extract all 
its sweetness and its joy; let us not neglect any of its 
"chances and glances," but from each passing day 
snatch the fruit it bears, ere it is too late. Thus in the 
absorbing interest of this life the potential joys of the 
next have been almost forgotten. "One world at a 
time, Sir," as Thoreau said to one who was asking him 
if he had made due preparation for the other ; in which 
retort he concentrated the very essence of the spirit of 
his age and ours. One world at a time, we say; there 
will be time for the next when we have passed out of 
this "high-domed, blossoming" world, where the sun- 
rises and the sunsets are so glamorous ; where each day 
is so full of experience; where love, and energy, and 
thought are so richly operant, and from which we shall 
all too soon have to depart without having exhausted 
half its possibilities, or more than tasted of its nectar. 
This is the worldly attitude that has succeeded the 
" otherworldliness " of former ages, by one of those swift 
revulsions which have so often marked the history of 
human sentiment and thought. It is an exaggerated 
recoil, which has brought many heavy penalties in its 
train, and will lead, let us hope, to due penances by and 
by. None the less, so it is. Heaven has faded into 
the distance for the time, for we are living on a new 
and unfamiliar earth. Unhappily it is an earth which 
we have suddenly, in a fit of revulsion and madness, 
turned to a hell — perhaps because we were making so 
much more of its possibilities as an earthly Paradise. 
And this war is perhaps God's rough method, than 
which nothing milder would suffice, to rouse us to a 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 35 

better sense of proportion and perspective, and to bring 
Heaven back from the far-removed distances once more 
within the horizons of thought and desire. If so, the 
stern medicine of war could not be administered to a 
better end. 

IV 

For it is certain that a permanent loss of faith in a 
future life would have effects more disastrous to the true 
interests of humanity than even this terrible world-war 
with its train of horror and woe. 

Even if it were proved to demonstration that the 
majority of mankind are consciously unaffected, and 
have never been other than unaffected, by a personal 
appeal to the immortal side of their being, it scarcely 
follows that it does not exercise through others a pro- 
found influence on their life and conduct. The stand- 
ards of human conduct have always been determined 
not by the thoughtless many but by the thoughtful few. 
The real revolution would come to pass if the latter 
deliberately left out of count all reference to another 
world as the supplement and completion of this in their 
formulation of the principles of human conduct. And 
even though the many might be unconscious of such 
reference in their standards of virtue, there might still 
be a great deal of implicit faith operating in the sub- 
conscious background of their thoughts which would 
have a profound influence on their behaviour and their 
ideals. Most men believe much more than they think 
they do; and their practical outlook is often coloured 
by doctrines from which they believe themselves to be 
thoroughly emancipated. Thus, just as individual 



$6 Faith and Immortality 

Agnostics brought up under Christian influences fre- 
quently retain their early ideals (as we have already 
seen to be the case with certain prominent thinkers of 
the Victorian era), even though these ideals are quite 
inconsistent with their later postulates, so it would take 
a generation or two of unbelief to eliminate the effects 
of faith in the community at large. It has been calcu- 
lated that it takes thirty or forty years for a change of 
view in philosophy or religion to percolate through the 
descending stratifications of thought and transform the 
standards of practical life. This law, according to 
which action always lags behind thought, should 
make us chary of estimating the effects to humanity 
of a radical loss of belief by its immediate results in 
conduct. It is only by a strong effort of imagination, 
and a long prophetic outlook, that the final issue can 
be realised. 

i. Let us, therefore, in the first place try to picture 
what a world from which the last relics of belief in a 
future life had vanished would be like, and what stan- 
dards of conduct it would be likely to formulate. If 
that belief disappeared it would carry away with it 
many others with which it has always been organically 
associated. We should have to give up the idea of a 
universe governed by a good and beneficent God. It 
is impossible to equate our deservings with our experi- 
ence within the limits of the life that now is. Emerson's 
essay on Compensation, in which he formulates a theory 
of moral equivalence of this kind, strikes an optimistic 
note which is negatived by the conclusions of all the 
philosophies of the past, and which the experience of 
the modern world has done nothing to make more 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality $7 

plausible. The unequal distribution of life's favours 
and rewards is to-day even more glaring than in earlier 
and simpler times. At the best this law of equivalence 
is true in so general a sense that it can bring but little 
comfort to innumerable cases in which there is no corre- 
spondence whatever between desert and opportunity, 
between character and its full moral issues. The ancient 
problem raised by Habakkuk, and elaborated in Job, of 
the righteous nation or individual visited by misfortune 
and left to perish miserably, while the wicked spread 
their branches like a bay-tree, and the oppressor goes 
unpunished, would still be as unanswerable as ever if 
this life were proved to be all. Such a theory would at 
long last destroy faith in a just and beneficent Provi- 
dence, and take the heart out of religion. The God 
whom Jesus preached would vanish from our spiritual 
horizon, and the Universe — to use Jean Paul Richter's 
vivid simile — would become an "eye-socket without an 
eye," a vast mausoleum into which all the higher values 
of life would lie buried for ever, with no hope of a better 
resurrection. With this faith would ultimately disap- 
pear the standards of conduct to which it has given 
birth, and we should have nothing to answer the man 
who would regulate his conduct by the short-sighted 
and selfish considerations which the worldly-minded 
have ever held to be alone reasonable and valid. 

2. The same must be said of those well-meaning en- 
deavours to ease the downward steps of faith in a future 
life by proposing certain alternative theories for the con- 
servation of life's higher values. The first of these is 
that of social immortality, which proposes to concen- 
trate human effort on the amelioration of our human 



38 Faith and Immortality 

environment in this world in lieu of making our life here 
a preparation for another and better world. "If," say 
such writers, " we can no longer look forward to a world 
in which the inequalities of this life will be redressed, let 
us make this world a fit place to live in. Let us remove 
its preventable evils, equalise the conditions of life for 
all, and erect a new Jerusalem on earth instead of wait- 
ing for one beyond the skies." This is a noble and 
moving vision, and one that must appeal to every true 
lover of his kind. In so far as it quickens the process of 
social reform it is an altogether admirable programme. 
Such a substitute for faith in immortality, however, will 
not carry us very far. It is based on an illicit assump- 
tion — that it is in the power of mankind not only to 
modify, but so to transform its environment, as to do 
away with the inequalities of human lot. It also puts 
forth a theory of human nature which facts do not 
justify. The disabilities in question are not laid upon 
us by Nature, but mainly by "man's inhumanity to 
man," which is the chief barrier to reform, and the rock 
on which all reforms seem doomed to split. This 
theory also does not make provision for those who in 
the meantime are the victims of the present disorders 
of society, and who will never enter the promised land 
of social emancipation. And if, as science prophesies, 
there is no abiding city for humanity as a whole on this 
earth, and the time will come (it matters not that it 
may be at a very distant point) when the conditions 
which have made life possible will gradually disappear, 
and the world be resolved into its elements, what will 
become of this ideal social order for which humanity 
has been striving for so long? Finally, they are few 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 39 

and far berween who are willing to immolate themselves 
on behalf of a distant goal, however assured ; and what of 
the vast multitudes without whose willing and un- 
selfish co-operation alone this social ideal can be 
reached, who are incapable of large aims, and whose 
enthusiasm for altruistic ends is so fitful and easily 
discouraged ? 

3. The second substitute for immortality as a motive- 
power for goodness in this life is what is called the 
immortality of influence. " Enough," it is said, " if we 
ourselves must pass out of existence, that whatever of 
good may be in us survives in the lives of others ' made 
better by our presence' and is passed on through them 
to future generations." This, as already suggested, 
was the faith that inspired George Eliot, and it com- 
forted many other noble souls in the last generation 
who had lost all hope of personal survival after death, 
such as J. Stuart Mill, 1 and in some measure Tenny- 

1 " It occurred to me," writes J. S. Mill in his Autobio- 
graphy (p. 148), " to put the question directly to myself : suppose 
that all your objects in life were realised, that all the changes in 
institutions and nations which you are looking forward to could 
be completely effected at this very instant, would this be a great 
joy and happiness to you? And an irrepressible self-conscious- 
ness distinctly answered, No! At this my heart sank within 
me, and the whole foundation on which my life was constructed 
fell down. ... I seemed to have nothing left to live for." He 
recovered from this mood by reading some of Wordsworth's 
poems through whom he discovered the world of value " to 
which poetry and religion alike held the key," which brought 
him " a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative 
pleasure which could be shared in by all human beings, which 
had no connection with struggle or imperfection, but would 
be made richer by every improvement in the physique or 
spiritual condition of mankind." 



40 Faith and Immortality 

son. 1 It is the Positivist faith, which has been so finely 
expounded in England by Frederic Harrison. Brown- 
ing gives it expression in La Saisiaz: 

" We who, darkling, timed the day's birth, struggling, testified 
to peace — 

Earned by dint of failure, triumph — we creative thought, 
must cease, 

In created word, thought's echo, due to impulse long since 
sped! 

Why repine? There's some one living, although we our- 
selves be dead!" 

But Browning's sense of the rights of personality is too 
rich and vivid to be satisfied with this form of im- 
mortality by proxy. There is a healthy but trans- 
figured egoism in him which demands a share for each 
soul in the good it has created, and thinks eternity none 
too large a sphere for the realisation of its latent pos- 
sibilities. His last word on this subject, which recurs 
again and again in his poetry, is his best : 

" No, at noontide in the bustle of man's work-time, 
Greet the Unseen with a cheer, 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
* Strive and thrive ! ' cry, ' Speed — fight on, fare ever 
There as here !' " 

And however true and quickening the thought that our 
influence can and does live on "in other lives"; how- 
ever we may admire those noble souls who find in such 
a thought enough inspiration to a life of service for 
others ; we may be sure that the permanent loss of faith 
in personal immortality would not only utterly dis- 

1 There is much in In Memoriam that gives colour to this 
idea, though there are passages in that poem which strike a 
higher and more confident note. 



The Eclipse of Faith in Immortality 4 1 

courage all but * fine spirits to fine issues touched," but 
would sap at their roots the courage and patience of the 
noble few who now labour and suffer and die in the 
interests of the race. 

4. Still less are we likely to find a satisfying sub- 
stitute for immortality in the theory of eternal values 
of which Professor Miinsterberg is one of the leading 
apostles. By this is meant that every ideal has a value 
of its own, and independent of all outward or tem- 
poral conditions. Spiritual realities are independent 
of time, and find their justification in their own quality 
and worth. Our true relation to them is not reached 
till we eliminate the time-relation, and love and follow 
them for their own sakes. Speaking of the death of 
a friend whom he had greatly loved and admired in 
life, he writes : " The man we love was not in space and 
time. . . . He lived his life in realising absolute values 
through his devotion to truth and beauty, to morality 
and religion. You and I do not know a reality of 
which he is in eternity not a noble part. The passing 
of time cannot make his personality unreal, and nothing 
would be added to his immortal value if some object 
like him were to enter the sphere of time again." 1 

Here again we have a truth of real and permanent 
value; one indeed v/hich is largely the fruit of that 
view of life which was brought fully for the first time 
within the horizon of human thought and affection by 
the Gospel, though there is much in Plato's teaching 
that is a true premonition of it. There is a timeless 
element in all moral as well as artistic excellence, an 
intrinsic value in spiritual realities such as justice, faith, 
1 Eternal Life, pp. 8-9. 



42 Faith and Immortality 

hope, and love. But it is a false abstraction to deal 
with these qualities as though they had any existence 
in and for themselves. They are all attributes of per- 
sonality, and though we are able to think of them as 
self-existing qualities, in an abstract way, this is a mere 
trick of the imagination. There is no such thing as 
love except in loving souls, no faith or hope but that 
which animates living hearts. If all personalities were 
suddenly to go out of existence, what would become of 
these beautiful sentiments and virtues? They would 
instantly cease to be. The real world of values is the 
world of living spirits, and it is altogether idle to speak 
of the qualities that make them admirable as having 
any existence apart from them. There are no immortal 
values, there is no world of values at all, apart from a 
world of immortal souls. 

We are thus brought back from these secondary 
aspects of immortality to the primary fact which alone 
makes them real, and we affirm with confidence that 
when we strip them of their factitious attributes, they 
can be no substitute for faith in the life eternal. If that 
faith goes, all these will ultimately go, however we may 
for a time invest them with a quasi-independent validity. 
The light would ultimately fade away from the far 
horizons of life; and, in the deepening twilight that 
would follow, the clear distinction we now see between 
temporal and eternal values would be finally lost. The 
issue of this would be that only temporal values would 
remain, and life would be shorn of its true dignity and 
glory. 



CHAPTER II 
SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY— I 



" All physical science is only a probability, and, what is 
more, one which we have no means whatever of measuring. 
It all rests on the assumption that the course of nature has 
been, is, and will continue to be, uniform. And yet, no one has 
ever been able to give any answer at all to the question, What 
proof have you that the uniformities which you call laws will 
not cease or alter to-morrow? In regard to this we are like a 
man rowing one way and looking another, steering his boat by 
keeping her stern in line with the objects behind him." — 
Fitzjames Stephen. 



CHAPTER II 

SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY— I 

" If the breath 
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, 
O Man, thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, 
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !" 

Coleridge. 

THE relations between Science and religious 
thought have been unsatisfactory from the 
beginning, and in no direction more so than in dealing 
with the question of the Future Life. This has long 
been a postulate for Religion, but it has ever been and 
still is a problem for Science. At the best we must 
allow that the affirmations of faith on this subject have 
received scant sympathy from most scientific thinkers; 
and if, on the whole, men have clung to the belief in a 
life beyond the grave, it has been in spite of a strong 
tendency to scepticism, if not to unbelief, on the part 
of those who represent the scientific spirit. Is there 
any valid reason for this discrepancy of attitude? It 
is my purpose in this chapter to show that there is none. 

I 
We shall best begin our way towards a safe con- 
clusion en this subject by defining our terms. 

What do we mean by Science ? Strictly speaking it 

45 



46 Faith and Immortality 

means " ordered thought about phenomena, or the facts 
of the world as open to our observing and reasoning 
faculties." Its direct and proper purpose is to describe 
and classify the facts of the objective world, and of our 
own subjective experiences in that world. It takes 
these facts as given in experience, groups them under 
their appropriate headings, and then draws its conclu- 
sions. When it has done all this, it has fulfilled its 
function : there is no more that it can do. It explains 
nothing ; it can account for nothing : it evaluates 
nothing. As soon as it goes beyond this, its proper 
function, it usurps the place belonging to other methods 
of dealing with the facts of experience. It trenches on 
the work of philosophy, or ethics, or religious thought. 
In a word, it becomes metaphysical, and then it ceases 
to be science in the proper sense of the term. 

This, however, is what Science, as it has been handled 
by its representatives, has been doing more or less from 
the beginning. It has not been content with dealing 
with facts in their purely phenomenal aspects, but has 
been prone to work surreptitiously on an implicit theory 
of reality, and to deduce conclusions which are valid 
only on condition that that theory is true. This is so 
because no one can be a scientist pure and simple. 
Whether he knows it or not, every man proceeds on 
some particular theory of reality in dealing with the 
facts of experience — i.e., he is implicitly a philosopher 
as well as a scientist, and his philosophy profoundly 
affects his scientific conclusions. Thus, every scientist 
is (tacitly or openly) a Materialist or a Spiritualist; a 
Monist, a Dualist, or a Pluralist; an Idealist or a Prag- 
matist ; an Agnostic or a Theist ; and he will handle the 



Science and Immortality 47 

facts of his particular science very differently according 
as he is the one or the other. It is practically impos- 
sible, indeed, for any of us completely to separate these 
two attitudes of mind (the scientific and the philo- 
sophical) in dealing with the facts of life; the one 
colours and affects the other, however impartial we may 
try to be. This is why such diverse religious conclu- 
sions are drawn from the same data by scientists like 
Huxley or Ernst Haeckel on the one side, and Clark 
Maxwell or Sir Oliver Lodge on the other. They are 
really working from totally different presuppositions as 
to the nature of ultimate reality — whether, e.g. y it is 
essentially "spiritual" or "material" — and these vitally 
affect their view of the significance and value of the 
phenomena in question. The man who believes, for 
instance, that mind is but a subtle phase of matter 
under certain highly organised conditions, will subor- 
dinate his religious intuitions and hopes to materialistic 
considerations, and will find no place for the notion that 
the soul is a real entity capable of continuing its exist- 
ence when severed from the bodily organism which is 
its home in this life ; while the thinker who believes that 
matter is but a manifestation of spirit under conditions 
of time and space will find no a priori difficulty in 
believing that the soul is immortal. The Pantheist, 
holding as he does the unitary spiritual nature of all 
reality, is prone to believe in the reabsorptios: of the 
soul into the universal divine essence at death; while 
the Theist is able to hold consistently to the faith that 
personality in man is capable of continued existence 
after death. It is clear therefore that until we know the 
philosophical position of a thinker we cannot judge of 



48 Faith and Immortality 

the value of many of what he calls his " scientific " con- 
clusions. 

It may be well to state that our position in this book 
is frankly Theistic, and that we are writing not for 
Agnostics or Materialists, but for perplexed believers. 
And our business in this chapter is to show whether the 
ascertained facts of science concerning the relations of 
soul and body preclude the belief that when these are 
separated at death, the soul can consistently be con- 
ceived of as still existing in another state. 



II 

It has been the natural or intuitive belief of mankind 
from earliest times that the living man differs from the 
corpse in the fact that his body " contains " a vital 
spiritual principle which determines its purposive move- 
ment, its growth and self-repair, and to which is due 
his capacity for sensation, thought, and feeling. This 
indwelling principle, in the language of every day, is 
called the soul, the mind, the spirit, or the personality, 
according to the angle from which it is viewed; but 
fundamentally the same thing is meant by all these 
terms. It always means that essential entity, not 
physical but spiritual in nature, which differentiates us 
as the living from the dead ; and it has generally been 
held that this entity, while in this life intimately asso- 
ciated with the body as its temporary home or instru- 
ment, is capable of surviving the dissolution of the 
body. 

How long has this belief been held by mankind ? It 
is impossible to dogmatise on a subject concerning 



Science and Immortality 49 

which no records could in the nature of things survive. 
All that is certain is that long before the era of written 
language it was practically in universal possession of 
the field. We cannot find any relics of human life so 
ancient that they do not present traces of the belief in 
a future life — a fact which proves that in the prehistoric 
period the distinction between soul and body was 
already held in some dim sense, and also the separable 
relation of the two. Non omnis mortar (" not all of me 
shall die") might have been inscribed as a motto on 
the most ancient tombs yet discovered. Primitive man, 
everywhere, so far as we can discover traces of him, 
believed in the survival of the spirit over bodily death. 
Many theories have been elaborated in recent times 
as to the mental condition in which such a belief was 
born. Modern Science professes to investigate the 
phenomena of religious belief with an open mind, and 
declines to pronounce on the objective validity of these 
phenomena — i.e., its method is psychological rather than 
metaphysical. This is a sound position to take up — 
or would be if, when the investigation is completed, the 
question of validity were really left to be evaluated on 
its own proper grounds. It cannot however be denied 
that the work of those scientists who have been most 
active in this region has tended to undermine rather 
than establish the belief in the confidence of the modern 
man. This is so because the majority of the investi- 
gators seem to have started from the position, " Granted 
that this belief is an illusion, how can we account for 
the fact that primitive man came to such a belief?" — 
and this assumption has led to some very questionable 
theories. It would be well, however, to remember that 

4 



5<3 Faith and Immortality 

the origin of a belief is one thing and its truth another ; 
in other words, a truth may come home to the mind 
along the pathway of an illusion. In such a case the 
illusion will pass with further enlightenment; while the 
truth remains, to be established finally on its own proper 
grounds. 

It is important to bear in mind this caveat in dealing 
with our subject, in view of the fact that the prevailing 
theories as to the rise of the belief in a future life as a 
rule seek its basis in illusory ideas. We refer to the 
apparently widespread primitive beliefs that a man's 
soul was in a way identified with his shadow, or with 
his breath. Language bears testimony of these two 
facts, as is seen in such words as manes (or shade), 
anima, animus, pneuma, and spirit, all of which suggest 
the idea of breath. The ghost or soul of a man was thus 
conceived as an attenuated form or aspect of body. 
Not that the primitive man must be thought of as a 
materialist in the modern sense, for that he certainly 
was not, being essentially animistic in his conception 
of reality, and holding that every material body (even 
inanimate objects) had its corresponding ghost-soul. 
Professor Tylor 1 thus attempts to describe what the 
human ghost-soul must have meant for such a man. " It 
is a thin unsubstantial human image, in its nature a 
sort of vapour, film, or shadow; the cause of life and 
thought in the individual it animates; independently 
possessing the personal consciousness and volition of 
its corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving 
the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place, 
mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting 
1 Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 429 (third edition). 



Science and Immortality 51 

physical power, and especially appearing to men waking 
or asleep as a phantasm separate from the body to 
which it bears the likeness; continuing to exist and 
appear to man after the death of that body; able to 
enter into possession and act in the bodies of other men, 
of animals, and even of things." This, or something 
like it, was the conception of soul inherited from far- 
off times by all historic peoples till quite recently; we 
find traces of it in Homer and other Greek writers, in 
Virgil and Ovid, and in the Old Testament, down to 
the prophetic period, if not beyond. It was the Greek 
philosophers who first began to speculate on more intel- 
lectual and abstract lines as to the nature of the soul. 
Thales taught that water was the essential nature of 
things and therefore of the soul; Anaximenes that it 
was air; Heraclitus that it was fire; while Pythagoras 
returned to a more Animistic position, and conceived 
of the soul as the double of the visible body, of the 
nature of a " daemon," or godlike immortal being, fallen 
from its heavenly state and imprisoned in the body by 
way of punishment — a position assumed by Empedocles 
in a more mystical sense. We thus find at the very 
dawn of philosophy two separate lines of thought 
emerging, the one tending to merge the soul in the 
universal movement of matter, the other affirming for it 
a more independent and spiritual nature — a distinction 
which has passed through Plato and Aristotle down to 
modern times. Those who favoured the Naturalistic 
philosophy were the precursors (whole-heartedly through 
Democritus, the arch-materialist of ancient times) of the 
modern rationalistic school; those who through the 
Platonic philosophy formulated a psycho-physical 



52 Faith and Immortality 

dualistic form of belief, continued the animistic or 
spiritual tradition. The popular mind of modern 
Europe has inherited much of the chaotic character of 
earlier beliefs on the nature of the soul, so that even 
to-day there is current among us almost every variety 
of opinion that foregoing ages have excogitated. 
Whether primitive man first came to a belief in the 
existence of the soul through the influence of dreams, 
the reappearance of ghosts, phantasms of the dead, the 
tendency to visualise absent or dead friends, or in some 
other way, that belief has persisted with a vigour that 
no scepticism seems able finally to destroy. And to 
believe in the existence of the soul as such has so far 
always meant faith in its survival of bodily death. It 
may indeed be said that unless irrefragable proof of 
the erroneousness of this faith can be brought forward, 
analogy would suggest that it will go on persisting in 
the future as in the past. True, there are reputable 
thinkers who " judge that this belief can only be kept 
alive if a proof of it, or at least a presumption in favour 
of it, can be furnished by the methods of empirical 
science." 1 But the conditions would probably be satis- 
fied for most people with less than this — i.e., if such 
ideas be finally prevalent as to the nature of soul and 
body, and of their relation to one another, as would put 
no impassable barrier to the faith that when the body 
dies the soul may still continue to exist. 

It must, however, be confessed, as already pointed 

out, that the trend of "scientific" thought on its 

broader and more philosophical side during the last 

half -century has been distinctly, and, till quite recently, 

1 McDougall, Body and Mind, p. xiii. 



Science and Immortality 53 

increasingly hostile to faith in a future life ; so much so 
that it has adversely affected religious faith in general. 
It is therefore of great importance that we should care- 
fully review the position. 

Ill 

The practical unsophisticated man thinks and acts on 
the assumption that his total being consists of an 
immaterial or spiritual " self " which is the seat of con- 
sciousness in its three forms of sensation, thought and 
will, on the one side; and on the other, of a bodily 
organism which through the special senses is the 
medium of communication and interaction between this 
" self " and the world of matter and of other persons 
like himself. The question, however, arises, What is the 
relation between these two entities of which he is the 
unity ? As soon as men begin to reflect on this mystery, 
they divide up into very diverse schools of thought 
according as they conceive this relation to be (1) one 
of cause and effect, (2) of identity, (3) of interaction in 
the proper sense of the term. We must all take up one 
or other of these three positions. Let us briefly con- 
sider the arguments for and against each in turn. 

1. Is the Relation between Soul and Body one of 
Cause and Effect? If so, two sub-alternatives present 
themselves — which is the cause, and which the effect? 
Is mind or soul the result of our bodily processes ? This 
is affirmed by the physical school. Or is the body the 
result of the creative or formative activity of the soul? 
Such is the position taken up by the Vitalists. 

The Physicists base their argument, either on empirical 
grounds — in which case they point to the evidence for 



54 Faith ana Immortality 

believing in the dependence of the mind on its bodily 
conditions— or on more abstract and a priori grounds 
which we will presently review. That there is the 
closest correspondence between our mental and physical 
life must be freely admitted by all. So far at least as 
consciousness is concerned, there is no room for doubt 
that it depends in this life on manifold conditions of 
bodily well-being, these conditions centring in the 
normal action of the brain-centres, to which afferent 
nerves carry the impressions made by the outside world 
or environment on the special organs of sense. We 
cannot see without the eye, or hear without the ear, or 
feel without our nerves of sensation. Again, we cannot 
move or act without the efferent nerves which carry 
back to the muscles the nervous impulses generated in 
the brain or other nerve centres. Our mental power 
grows with the development of the brain-structures 
during the years of childhood and early youth; it 
remains practically stationary during the years of adult 
manhood ; and it gradually wanes with the onset of old 
age. In periods of health and vigour our mental con- 
dition is fresh and eager; when our bodily functions 
become deranged, we are oppressed with a sense of 
lassitude and inability; when death comes on us 
gradually or suddenly, our earthly conscious career 
comes to an end. All these facts have been familiar to 
every generation ; it has always been so, and under pre- 
sent earthly conditions it will doubtless remain so. Were 
there no other considerations than these bearing on the 
subject we should inevitably be forced to conclude that 
the soul, whatever be its ultimate nature, is the result of 
certain highly organised combinations of matter, and 



Science and Immortality 55 

that when these conditions cease with the decay and 
death of the body, the soul simply goes out of existence 
with the dissolution of the organism that gave it birth. 
Further reflection, however, shows a very obvious 
fallacy in such reasoning. Professor William James 
has pointed out that there are two or three other alterna- 
tives to belief in the causative relation between Body 
and Mind. It may be causative, as the above theory 
takes for granted. But supposing, for the sake of argu- 
ment, that body and mind are two entities independent 
in origin, which come into close relation in our actual 
life on earth ? And supposing that under certain strict 
physical conditions the body becomes fitted for the 
manifestation of the soul through sense and thought 
and impulse ? Then, so long as the body fulfils these 
conditions, the soul will be able to receive impressions 
from the world of sense, and to react through the body 
on that world. And in such a case it would only be 
able to do so in strict accordance with the efficiency of 
the bodily structure for this purpose. A pane of glass 
is able to transmit the light of heaven into our dwellings, 
but it does not create the light which it lets through. 
The pull of a trigger releases the charge in a pistol by 
upsetting the balance of the forces imprisoned in the 
charge, but it does not create these forces. Thus, 
through co-operation and strict correspondence between 
certain organised forms of matter on the one side, and 
certain mental energies on the other, the same apparent 
results would appear as though the one were the cause 
of the other : and yet they might be independent in 
origin, and quite capable of existing apart under other 
conditions. There is therefore nothing in the close con- 



56 Faith and Immortality 

nection of mind and brain, soul and body, which forces 
us to the conclusion that the physical fact is the cause 
of the mental. It may be simply the condition of the 
manifestation and activity of our souls on the plane of 
our earthly life. 

But the physicist may proceed on more general lines 
of reasoning in order to arrive at his conclusion. 
Modern science has steadily extended the realm of 
physical uniformity over all natural phenomena, until 
the law of the conservation of energy has become if not 
an axiom, at least a postulate of all scientific thought; 
by which is meant that while the energy of the universe 
is manifold in form, and passes more or less freely from 
one form into another, its total amount is always a fixed 
quantity. Now, experiments of the most careful kind 
appear to uphold the conclusion that this law holds 
good of the human body as strictly as of any other 
form of matter, and that the energy-value of the heat, 
chemical products and movements of the body, equals 
the energy-value of the food and oxygen absorbed in 
nutrition. If so, it seems to follow that however the 
mind may seem to affect the body, it cannot really do 
so; otherwise it must be conceived as disturbing the 
perfect equivalence of the forces at work on the changes 
taking place in the nervous system. This, however, 
never takes place. On the other hand, the mind is con- 
fessedly affected by the condition and efficiency of the 
bodily functions. Thus many physicists have come to 
the conclusion that the mind is an inert result of the 
physical functions, which has no reciprocal effect on 
these functions, and is a mere by-product or efiphe- 
nontenon, as helpless to affect its material conditions as 



Science and Immortality 57 

the glancing light reflected from the broken surface of 
a wave is to affect the form or impetus of the wave as it 
breaks on the shore. This is the theory of the relation 
of body and mind which found wide vogue in the latter 
half of the nineteenth century, chiefly under the influ- 
ence of Professors Tyndall and Huxley, the latter of 
whom gave it the name of epiphenomenalism. 

The inherent defect in this theory, as held by many 
leading Evolutionists, is that it leaves the emergence of 
mind in the upward march of life an utterly unex- 
plained mystery. If the circle of physical and vital 
processes is complete altogether apart from conscious- 
ness, and if our mental operations (which are essentially 
purposeful in character and aim at producing results) 
are of no use to our bodily processes, and unable to 
affect them in any way, how came such a strange fact to 
be? On such a theory, at a certain point in the course 
of evolution something unique and out of all relation to 
preceding results came into being, persisted through 
long ages, and came to final and wonderful maturity in 
man, which yet has never had any real function to fulfil 
in the vital process. This sins against one of the first 
postulates of scientific thought — the law that nothing 
can persist in the world of reality which has no function 
to perform. Again, the theory sins against the law of 
cause and effect : for here is an effect that has come to 
pass without subtracting anything from the cause, or 
reproducing, in another form, any of its energy; and 
this is absurd. When in addition we consider the fact 
that on any hypothesis the human mind is the highest 
entity in Nature — a kind of " final end " towards which 
all previous stages of the evolutionary process have been 



58 Faith and Immortality 

directed — the mystery deepens. And, finally, we find 
it impossible practically to believe that, while bodily 
conditions do confessedly affect the state of the mind, 
our mental operations can never affect our body; that 
the thought of going to town, for instance, eventuating 
in the desire and will to go to town, is not the real 
operative cause of my bodily movements thither. Any- 
how, we act on that assumption — epiphenomenalists as 
thoroughly as others — and it will probably be beyond 
the power of any philosopher to persuade the rest of 
the world that all this amounts to pure illusion. It is 
indeed needless to add anything to these remarks in 
refutation of the epiphenomenal theory of body and 
mind, for it has now been generally given up, and would 
probably never have had any real vogue but for the 
extraordinary authority wielded in the scientific world 
during the last generation by its chief exponents. 

Let us, then, turn to the Vitalist position. Those who 
hold this theory claim that the facts of physiology bear 
witness to the presence in the body of a non-material 
energy of a teleological or purposive kind which builds 
up the body out of its physical materials, governs its 
functions, repairs its waste, and maintains the balance 
and efficiency of its processes from birth to death. When 
the anti-vitalist points out that all the particular re- 
actions that take place in the body, and in the 
individual cells that compose it, are still either physical 
or chemical, the Vitalist makes no demur : but he asks 
by what physical or chemical means are we to account 
for the way in which these are built up with faultless 
faithfulness to type, and yet with peculiarities of struc- 
ture and balance in each individual organism ? It is 



Science and Immortality 59 

one of the universal laws of physics that all forms of 
mechanical energy are in a state of gradual dissipation 
(the material world is like a clock that is constantly run- 
ning down). But in the living being there is a constant 
building up or integration of these forces (anabolism), 
which balance the physical tendency to dissipation 
(katabolism), and this goes on without pause so long as 
life continues. This curious influence or entity in the 
body is capable not only of securing the repair of 
injured parts, but even in certain cases (i.e., that of 
Begonia) of rebuilding the whole organism out of a 
single cell. Again, the growth of an embryo suggests 
the presence of a teleological (mental) factor able to 
overcome obstacles placed in its path and comparable to 
the persistency of a creature to achieve its end (i.e., the 
satisfaction of its needs) under the driving power of 
instinctive impulse or craving. This capacity to adapt 
itself to varying circumstances is a universal feature of 
life, and this by adjustments that are sometimes quite 
different from the normal. To call this power physical 
is to subsume under that title things that are totally 
different in kind — a process that tends to confusion 
rather than clearness of thought. 

The recognition of this non-material directive and 
conserving power does not, however, mean that there 
is any breach in the continuity of the physical and 
chemical process in the living body. The Vitalist fully 
allows this continuity; what he claims is that the 
co-ordinating power is something different from the 
forces of physics, and yet capable of using them for its 
organic ends. And if there is such a power efficiently 
at work in the unconscious processes of bodily life, is 



60 Faith and Immortality 

there any consistency in denying the conscious directive 
and controlling efficiency of mind over bodily move- 
ment? It seems impossible to account for the fact of 
organic life without some such non-material agency 
which is far more akin in nature to purposive action in 
the mental life than to a physical force. Those who 
would account for the behaviour of organisms on 
mechanical grounds are thus hard put to it, for there is 
nothing analogous to it in the mechanical realm. And 
how is it that at the moment of death all the vital pro- 
cesses suddenly cease, and the whole body rapidly dis- 
integrates into its physical constituents ? On the theory 
that the vital principle has ceased to hold together and 
control the physical processes, all is clear; but on the 
non-vitalist ground there is here an unexplained and 
baffling mystery, for all the chemical and mechanical 
reactions in the body still remain, only now they are 
disintegrative in character, as is the case with all 
material forces when left to themselves. 



CHAPTER III 

SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY— II 



??? 

ABRIDGED HISTORY OF TWO WORLDS 

Interpretation : 

, " There are two Worlds — a Lower and a Higher, separ- 
ated by the thinnest of partitions. The Lower World is 
the world of Questions ; the Higher World is that of 
Answers. Endless doubt and unrest here Below; wonder- 
ing, admiring, adoring certainty Above/ ' — Oliver 
Wendell Holmes : Over the Teacups, p. 117. 



CHAPTER III 

SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY— II 

" I am an acme of things accomplished, 
And I an encloser of things to be." 

Whitman. 

IV 

WE now pass from the first to the second theory 
of the relation between body and mind — i.e.> 
that of their identity. This is held by various thinkers 
in three forms, which must be briefly described. 

i. The first is not so much a theory of identity 
as of crude parallelism, which has been thus described : 
"According to this view, physical and psychical pro- 
cesses are equally real ; but there is no causal connection 
between psychical and physical processes : the two 
series of events — the psychical processes of the mind 
and the physical processes of the brain with which 
they are associated — merely accompany one another in 
time : their relation is one of concomitance only ; the 
two series of events merely run parallel to each other 
in time, as two railway trains run side by side on a 
double track, or two rows of light projected towards 
the same infinitely distant point run parallel with one 
another in time and space. Within each series the law 
of causation holds good, the successive steps being 

63 



64 Faith and Immortality 

related to the preceding and successive steps as effects 
and causes; but no causal links stretch across from one 
series to another." 1 This is the theory first formulated 
by Leibnitz. It is mentioned here only because it pre- 
sents the most extreme attempt to express the invariable 
concomitance of the mental and physical processes of 
mind and being while denying their causal relation. 
This is done, however, at the expense of making the 
concomitance (which is conceded by every one) unin- 
telligible. For, if these two processes are divided by an 
impassable chasm across which there are no bridges of 
connection, how comes it that there is concomitance 
at all ? Leibnitz solved this riddle by positing a divine 
law of " pre-established harmony " between the two series 
of events. This, however, is no explanation, but a mix- 
ture of poor theology and worse science. For it is 
illegitimate to mix the function of secondary causes with 
that of the Great First Cause in this way; they belong 
to two orders of thinking, and while each is valid in 
its own sphere, you cannot logically bring in the one 
to account for the gaps in the other. 

2. Modern parallelists have therefore attempted to 
bridge this gulf by the theory of the ultimate identity 
of mind and matter, but they again divide into two 
classes, one positing an unknown Reality of which mind 
and matter are two manifestations or aspects, either 
making this reality unknowable in itself (Herbert 
Spencer), or boldly calling it God (Spinoza) as the 
hidden source of all manifestations both physical and 
mental. We need not here trouble to characterise this 
theory further, since the arguments for and against can 
1 McDougall, Body and Mind, p. 131. 



Science and Immortality 65 

be equally dealt with in dealing with the other form in 
which the theory is widely held to-day, which is — 

3. The theory that consciousness is the only Reality, 
matter being that form in which all consciousness other 
than my own is manifested to me, mind being my own 
consciousness. This is the opposite theory to that of 
epiphenomenalism, "which makes thought the shadow 
of things," for it makes " things the shadow of thoughts," 
At first blush this form of psycho-physical parallelism, 
by giving the primacy to mind, would seem to make for 
the permanency of the individual soul, and so far the 
doctrine of immortality. As worked out by its most 
consistent exponents, however, this result does not fol- 
low, except in an impersonal and metaphorical way. 
For by resolving all things into forms of consciousness 
it must treat the particular consciousness of the indi- 
vidual as a manifestation (and possibly an evanescent 
manifestation) of the universal consciousness; just as a 
wave that rises and falls is but a particular (and 
evanescent) phenomenon of the universal sea. 

It is needless here to deal with the various forms of 
psycho-physical parallelism. Briefly they all imply 
the identity of matter and mind, as do the materialists ; 
but while the latter express all mental facts m terms of 
the physical, the former express all physical facts im 
terms of mentality. The most thorough-going form is that 
of Fechner, the German idealist, who has recently been 
championed by Professor W. James and others. Accord- 
ing to this thinker every existing thing, however 
material it may be, has its own measure of conscious- 
ness or sub-consciousness, the latter rising over the 
" threshold " into actual and ever more intense con- 



66 Faith and immortality 

sciousness, as life becomes more highly organised. Each 
individual consciousness is something like an eddy or 
"node" in the larger consciousness of the universe. 
The dust speck in the air, the very atoms of matter, 
have their modicum of it; larger material aggregates 
have theirs ; there is a consciousness of the fly, the bird, 
the man, but also of the mountain, the earth, the sun, 
and each larger circle includes the lesser, till in the 
universal consciousness all lesser forms are merged, as 
the ocean unifies all its streams and eddies, its pools 
and bays and seas, little and great. Even our own 
personal consciousness is but the " polled sum " of those 
of the individual organs and cells of the body, which 
run into one because of the continuity of the bodily ner- 
vous processes, forming a final unity in virtue of the 
distinctiveness of the body as an organism. In the 
same manner, we have the social consciousness of a com- 
munity in virtue of its internal continuity of intercourse, 
and of its separableness from other communities; we 
have various types of national consciousness; and we 
have the race-consciousness of mankind as a whole. 
Summing up all these ever-enlarging aggregates of 
consciousness, we arrive at the all-inclusive conscious- 
ness of the Universe — i.e., of God, in whom we live 
and move and have our being as individual and social 
aggregates. 

It is clear that on this basis the word soul stands for 
no positive, integral entity, and that it can have no per- 
sonal persistence after the dissolution of the organism 
in virtue of which alone it has any unitary existence. 
Pure Monism, whether Idealistic or Materialistic, is thus 
quite unable to assure us of immortality, except in 



Science and Immortality 67 

the derivative sense of a continued influence on the 
minds of others, so long as we are remembered and the 
value of our work persists ; and this, as we have already 
seen, is a notion of immortality which, while true so far 
as it goes, brings no ultimate satisfaction to those who 
(we think rightly) consider the continuance and per- 
fecting of their personal life in another state of exist- 
ence the only tenable theory of immortality. 

The theory of psycho-physical parallelism (or identity) 
finally breaks down at this point. It cannot account 
(1) for the unitary character of all consciousness as we 
know it. If we appeal not to theory but to experience, 
we must characterise every known consciousness as 
mine, or yours, or his. We KNOW of no other than per- 
sonal consciousness ; if indeed we cannot say there is no 
other. (2) And for such forms of consciousness there 
can be no coalescence, though there certainly is a partial 
interpenetration or transfusion of various individual 
consciousnesses in social intercourse. I am aware of 
my friend's mind, thoughts, feelings; but only in virtue 
of the persistence of his individuality and of my own 
perceiving mind. When my friend dies, I am not in the 
least under the impression that my conscious life has 
been enriched through partial coalescence of his with 
mine as a slightly larger fraction of the "earth" con- 
sciousness of the " all " consciousness ; on the contrary 
/ have lost him, except in so far as he survives in a 
fainter and quite unresponsive way in my memory of 
him. And even when, through the operation of love 
and sympathy, I am most conscious of the warmth and 
glow of my friend's personality, this is still of value for 
both of us only in virtue of our distinctiveness as 



68 Faith and Immortality 

individual persons. We can go so far as to say that if 
it were possible for two minds really to coalesce into 
one form of consciousness, it would be a weaker form 
than that of either before the coalescence took place. 
Neither Fechner, nor his more modern representatives 
Paulsen, Miinsterberg, or James, has in the least got over 
this fact of the essential distinctiveness of each personal 
consciousness, or suggested a way in which any two 
such consciousnesses can merge into a third, without 
eliminating themselves and each other in the process. 

Nor, finally, can this form of idealism account for or 
give an adequate place in its theory of mind for the sense 
of personal identity. All consciousness, we are told, is 
known to us as a stream, a flow, an everchanging pro- 
cess in time. But how, if this be all, can such a stream 
of sensations, ideas, memories, impulses, ever become 
conscious of itself as an organic whole ? What is it in 
mind that can reflect on its own manifestations ? How 
can that which is but a present stream remember past 
phases in that stream ? What is it that can hold past, 
present, and future in one comprehensive mental grasp 
or conspectus? Pure Monism has no answer to this 
enigma. "Soul," says Paulsen, 1 for instance, "is the 
multiplicity of inner experiences, bound together in a 
unity in a way of which nothing further can be said." 
And again, " It is a fact that the processes of the inner 
life do not occur in isolation, and that each is lived in 
the consciousness of belonging to the unitary whole of 
the individual life. How this can happen I cannot pre- 
tend to say any more than I can say how consciousness 
is at all possible!' [Italics ours.] This is little better, 

1 Introduction to Philosophy , p. 387, quoted by McDougall. 



Science and Immortality 69 

as McDougall suggests, than the famous confession of a 
certain philosopher, " Gentlemen, let us look this diffi- 
culty boldly in the face, and pass on to the next !" 

Thus, neither the epiphenomenal theory of the relation 
of mind and brain, nor the various theories of the parallel- 
ism of mind and matter, appear to us to present any con- 
sistent explanation of the crucial facts of our conscious 
personal life. Thorough-going philosophical Monism 
of every type, whether materialistic or psychical, can, in 
other words, only maintain itself by slurring over essen- 
tial differences, which tend ultimately to reassert them- 
selves against any and every attempt to ignore or sub- 
sume them under insufficient catagories of identity. 
Some other freer and more adequate theory must 
be found which will permit the widest contrasts in 
our experience to assert their true value while finding 
their ultimate harmony in a still deeper unity. 

V 

This can in our judgment be found only in the 
proximate dualism of mind and matter which yet per- 
mits them to interact on each other freely under certain 
conditions. The dualism is real, and must not be 
slurred over; yet is the interaction real, which proves 
that they have that in common which suggests an 
underlying unity. And for philosophical minds that 
are also religious this underlying unity can only be 
found in the creative and sustaining activity of a personal 
God. 

1. First, as to the dualism of mind and matter. This 
consists in the fact that all forms and conditions of 
matter are under the sway of mechanical laws; while 



70 Faith and Immortality 

mind is essentially teleological and purposive in all its 
manifestations. The changes of matter are quantita- 
tive; those of mind are qualitative. Matter moves a 
tergo as it is impelled from behind : its primum mobile 
lies in the past ; mind (including all forms of life) ener- 
gises as inspired by desire for the accomplishment of ends ; 
its impulse is drawn from the future. Matter belongs 
to the realm of necessity, mind to that of spontaneity, 
choice and freedom. There is thus a wide disparity in 
their attributes and manifestations; and this disparity 
should not be minimised in the interests of any theory, 
monistic or otherwise. If Monists we must be, it is on 
grounds that give the contrasted aspects of mind and 
matter their full significance and value. And only 
Theistic Monism can do that. 

Now Man as the highest of organised or living crea- 
tures is a strange compound of these two contrasted 
forms of being. He is mind, and he has a body : 
and these are joined in an intimacy of relationship 
which is at once the mystery and the explanation of his 
being. His earthly experience is a perpetual attempt in 
the sphere of conduct or behaviour to solve the prac- 
tical problems of the psycho-physical conditions of his 
existence. And briefly, the central problem of human 
life is so to use the relationship of mind and body as to 
further the ends of this higher or spiritual life : to 
"win" for himself a "soul" through the interaction of 
mind and body; in other words, to DERIVE from all his 
psycho-physical experiences their highest spiritual 
values. 

2. But is this interaction real? That is the crucial 
question for us here. We can only very briefly sum- 



Science and Immortality 71 

marise the positive argument, leaving the interested 
reader to the more technical literature of the subject for 
a fuller treatment. 

We begin by pointing once more to the fact that in 
the upward march of life there has been a continuous 
development in the scope and richness of its psychic 
or mental side. How far down in the scale conscious- 
ness begins to appear it is impossible experimentally 
to point out; but all the indications tend to the con- 
clusion that in some dim and imperfect way (e.g., as a 
sense of want and an incipient form of desire, and so 
of volition) the simplest form of life has its conscious 
side. Faint and few are the felt wants of a monad or 
amoeba, but such as they are, they are real, and by pur- 
posive action they are capable within narrow limits of 
being met. As living creatures rise in complexity 
of organisation, and more especially in the com- 
plexity of their nervous system, the psychic elements 
are quickened and sharpened, and that in exact corre- 
spondence with their vital needs. The reason which 
naturally suggests itself is that in virtue of their psychic 
qualities, living beings are better able to serve these 
vital needs; to defend themselves, e.g., against their 
enemies; to find, eat, and digest their food; to repro- 
duce their kind ; to rear their young ; and so to enable 
their type to persist in the struggle for existence. All 
its operations and activities imply purposive action, and 
purposive action is always mental in nature and origin, 
having the idea of an end as its goal, and some form 
of desire for its efficient impulse. From the purely 
evolutionary standpoint, therefore, we seem forced to 
the conclusion that mind can act on body, by directing 



72 Faith and Immortality 

its energies towards ends that are vitally fruitful To re- 
fuse to accept this conclusion is to make the simultaneous 
emergence and close co-ordination of physical and 
psychical factors in the upward march of life an in- 
soluble enigma. 

So much for the general question as seen in the light 
of that theory of Evolution which is now universally 
held, however doubtful its modus operandi. The same 
conclusion is brought home to us from the side of the 
physiology of the individual organism. This is the 
home of innumerable chemical and physical reactions, 
and of an indescribably complex co-ordination of pro- 
cesses, which are held together and directed towards 
a common vital end. The substances and reactions 
involved in these processes are confessedly material, 
and follow the mechanical laws that always rule in the 
world of matter. But whence comes their guiding and 
controlling principle? How is it that these changes, 
so diverse and multiform in character, all work to the 
common end of maintaining the inner harmony and 
wellbeing of the organism as a whole ? Whence comes 
its stubborn unity, which is maintained unbroken 
through all the processes of growth, waste and repair? 
What is the secret of that wonderful healing process 
whereby deleterious substances are eliminated, wounds 
made whole, sickness dispelled, and the integrity of 
the constitution retained through all the unforeseen 
vicissitudes of experience? To say that these activ- 
ities are all mechanical — z>., involved in the very con- 
stitution of matter — is to ignore the fundamental differ- 
ence between living and dead forms of matter, which is 
the very problem to be solved, What happens, then, 



Science and Immortality 73 

when death suddenly supervenes, and all the processes 
involved as suddenly cease, leaving the body a mass 
of disintegration and corruption? Something has dis- 
appeared, and this something is that non-material vital 
principle which had held together and directed the 
physical and chemical operations of the organism in the 
interests of life — a principle which, pervading and con- 
trolling the whole as from some mysterious centre, does 
the same kind of work for the body as the human mind 
does in its operations on the wider environment in which 
it lives, moves and has its earthly being. 

Psychology tells the same tale. Our mental life is 
composed of the most diverse elements provided by 
the special senses — sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, 
and the undifferentiated feelings which accompany our 
organic processes. What is it that co-ordinates these 
sensations into a psychic whole? Granted the separ- 
able forms of consciousness, what is it that accounts for 
our ^//-consciousness ? How are my varied sensations 
all referred to a common centre, and felt to be my sensa- 
tions ? What is it that enables me to discriminate 
between these sensations as successive or different, to 
classify them, refer them to their special origin, and at 
the same time distinguish between my permanent self, 
and all these passing phases of my experience? How 
comes it that I can distinguish between my present 
sensations and my past, and realise amid the flux of 
time my stable self-identity ? And, greater mystery 
still, what is it that amid the stream of consciousness 
enables me to arrest its flow, and combine in new wholes 
the mingled elements of present sensation and past 
recollection ? If we posit a soul, for which these things 



74 Faith and Immortality 

are> but which is not to be identified with any or all 
of them, we have a working theory of experience that 
is rational, and meets the facts; if we say the "soul* is 
only the sum of our experiences, we are lost in enigmas 
to which there is no answer. 

We claim, therefore, that the phenomena of our living 
experience are best explained on the theory of two 
entities — body and soul — which interact on each other 
during the whole of our life, and find their deeper unity 
in a creative act of God, in virtue of which they are 
brought together at birth, and maintained in close and 
fruitful relationships till death puts an end to it. 
Neither the theory of identity nor of parallelism satis- 
fies the conditions of this problem ; the former confounds 
things essentially different, and the latter fails to meet 
the facts of the case as does the idea of interaction. 
We are still left with many problems on our hands. 
Science, for instance, has nothing to say as to the origin 
of the soul, or its destiny, nor can it tell us the nature 
of the bond that builds body and soul together; all it 
can do is to deal with the phenomena of our psycho- 
physical life while under our observation, which is its 
proper sphere. Enough if it leaves the question of 
origin, and especially of destiny, free and open for con- 
sideration, without prejudicing the issue from other 
and deeper points of view. 

VI 

Before closing this discussion, something must be 

said of the results of that great inquiry into the 

relation of body and soul which was initiated about 

thirty years ago by the Society for Psychical Research. 



Science and Immortality 75 

These results are pertinent to our inquiry only in so 
far as they bear out the conclusion that the complex 
constitution of man includes such an entity as the soul, 
that it is separable from the bodily functions, and that 
it is capable of survival of bodily death. 

The painstaking and scientifically conducted investi- 
gations of the eminent group of skilled observers who 
have carried on the work of this society have already 
given rise to a voluminous literature, which has exer- 
cised a profound influence in modifying the agnostic 
attitude of scientists of every school of thought on this 
subject. Beginning with the phenomena of uncon- 
scious muscular action, as exemplified in the movements 
of the pendule explorateur and other objects (such as 
the divining-rod, the autoscope, etc.), and passing on to 
the phenomena of thought-transference, hypnotism, tele- 
pathy, phantasms of the living or the dead, dreams, 
supernormal perception, hauntings, and cross-corre- 
spondence through automatic writing, they have ar- 
rived at the theory of the sub-conscious personality, 
which has exercised so deep an influence on modern 
psychology. By this is meant that consciousness as we 
know it is only a part of our mental or spiritual activity ; 
and that in the dim recesses of our being many wonder- 
ful operations are taking place continually, only a small 
part of which ever rise above the threshold of conscious- 
ness, but which profoundly influence us in many ways. 
The facts of this sub- and super-normal mental activity 
are no longer in doubt; but their explanation is not so 
clear. Already, however, they tell heavily against the 
theory of materialism, and in favour of the three points 
mentioned above. 



76 Faith and Immortality 

I. The existence of the soul. The abnormal facts 
established by the above investigations strongly sug- 
gest the theory that the body is inhabited by a spiritual 
entity which uses the body for its own ends, but is not 
the mere sum of the mental operations which are the 
psychic equivalent of our nervous reactions. This 
entity is, in certain sensitive or telepathic individuals, 
capable of perceptions of facts at a distance without the 
help of the bodily sensations, being most active when 
these are quiescent, and when the normal consciousness 
is somnolent. In such states the "self" seems to sink 
into its own inner depths and to be capable of perceiv- 
ing far away or future events unknown to those within 
reach of sensuous communication, and of which the 
subject could not possibly have had any previous know- 
ledge. The cumulative evidence for these facts is so 
manifold and impressive that they can no longer be 
doubted by any reasonable mind. The late Professor 
F. W. H. Myers was led by it to the following conclu- 
sion : " I regard each man as at once profoundly 
unitary and almost infinitely composite, as inheriting 
from earthly ancestors a multiplex and "colonial" 
organism — polyzoic and perhaps polypsychic in an 
extreme degree; but also as ruling and unifying that 
organism by a soul or spirit absolutely beyond our 
present analysis — a soul which has originated in a 
spiritual or metethereal environment; which even while 
embodied subsists in that environment, and which v^'ll 
subsist therein after that body's decay." 1 He con- 
tinues, "Whether or no this thesis be as yet sufficiently 

1 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 
vol. L, p. 34. 



Science and Immortality 77 

proved, it is at least at variance with no scientific prin- 
ciple nor established fact whatever ; and it is of a nature 
which continued evidence may conceivably establish to 
the satisfaction of all. The negative thesis, on the other 
hand, is a thesis in unstable equilibrium. It cannot be 
absolutely proved by any number of negative instances, 
and it may be disproved by a single positive instance. 
It may have at present a greater scientific currency, but 
it can have no real authority as against the view de- 
fended in these pages." 1 This position, it is true, is not 
taken up by all psychologists. Professor W. James, for 
instance, though in his great work on the Principles of 
Psychology he felt forced to recognise something of the 
nature of a true soul, gave up this notion later, and held 
to the " transmission " theory of consciousness, as though 
it were a kind of sea of light lying beyond sense, and 
breaking through the "transparent" brain substance 
into the world of sense, the higher levels of conscious- 
ness being composed of lesser streams at a lower level. 
This, however, he confessed to believe at the expense of 
logic and common sense, and in the interests of a theory 
which in itself is questionable, and to our judgment 
inconsistent. Apart from such a priori theories, it is 
difficult to believe that any psychologist can refuse to 
recognise in the facts evidence of the existence and 
activity within the body of such a controlling and co- 
ordinating entity as is implied in the word "soul" or 
"spirit." 

2. The partial independence of Mind and Body. 
The older psychologists held to the complete corre- 

1 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 
vol. i., p. 35. 



78 Faith and Immortality 

spondence of our mental and nervous processes, and so 
far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, there is no 
reason (as we have seen) to modify that position. But 
the discovery of the subconscious "self," together with 
many facts of abnormal psychic life have seriously 
modified this theory. These results suggest that the 
conscious self, which acts through the special senses, is 
only a small part of our total personality, which lies 
behind this more or less brightly illuminated area as a 
dark but active background into which the impressions 
of the outer world sink, and where they are profoundly 
modified before they rise again into clear consciousness. 
Many of our actions also are initiated in impulses rising 
spontaneously out of this dim background of being. 
In certain abnormal subjects, states occur in which the 
ordinary consciousness is quiescent, while the subcon- 
scious self becomes hyperactive, displaying powers of 
insight and capacities for knowledge of what takes 
place at a distance totally beyond the range of sense- 
perception, and disconnected with it, as the phenomena 
of hypnotic trance, hysteria, etc., abundantly prove. 
An exhaustive examination of these phenomena sug- 
gests that that portion of the self which is incarnate in 
the body is only a fraction — and a variable fraction — 
of its total being. Many aspects of what is called 
" dual " personality suggest that the same brain is used 
alternately by different "selves" (and sometimes even 
simultaneously). The power of phantasy in hysterical 
patients to create groups of sensations or "belts of 
anaesthesia out of relation with true anatomical areas" 
exhibits the power of mind to affect the body in a way 
inconsistent with any fixed law of co-ordination be- 



Science and Immortality 79 

tween bodily and mental processes. 1 The whole subject 
is very obscure, but enough has been established to 
shatter for ever the theory that the soul is the psychic 
equivalent of mechanical chemical and nervous changes 
in the body, and to suggest that the relation is much 
more separable than Victorian science had taken for 
granted to be the case. 

3. Survival of the soul after bodily death. This 
problem has furnished the central motive for the investi- 
gations of the Society for Psychical Research, and 
accounts for the long, patient and cautious way in 
which these have been carried out. In spite of many 
baffling difficulties, many of the leading members have 
long been convinced that they have received definite 
messages from deceased persons, and these include such 
authorities as Messrs. Gurney and Myers, Sir Oliver 
Lodge, Sir W. F. Barrett, Professor W. James, Dr. 
Hodgson, etc. Others confess that the evidence, while 
strongly suggesting survival, does not quite carry con- 
viction to their minds, owing to our "ignorance of the 
limits to the scope of telepathic powers." Sir W. F. 
Barrett, in his little brochure on Psychical Research, 2 
writes : " The well-authenticated cases of such com- 
munications " (i.e., from discarnate spirits) "that have 
occurred during the last few years are far too numerous 
for recital here, even in the form of the barest cata- 
logue. If we consider only the one particular little 
group of friends and colleagues who have so swiftly 
reassembled on the other side, we find instances many 
and impressive. Those who, like the present writer, 

1 Myers' Human Personality, etc., vol. i., pp. 44 et seq. 
* Williams and Norgate (Home University Library). 



So Faith and Immortality 

were intimate with them, have recognised repeatedly 
the familiar traits, material and trivial, habits of thought, 
and tricks of speech, that betoken a personality, or its 
vraisemblance still existing, though contending with 
obstacles which forbid more than an incomplete expres- 
sion. Such changes as are noted might spring natur- 
ally from the changed conditions of the communica- 
tors/' 1 Thus he finds that Frederick Myers "has lost 
nothing of his intense concern about his comrades on 
their homeward way," nor Henry Sidgwick "his pro- 
pensity for awaiting results with scrupulous patience, 
though he has now, as well he may, added to patience 
a confident hope." And he ventures to add that "the 
evidence is being constantly strengthened, not by 
accumulation merely, but by increased cogency and 
purposefulness. If we review the past ten years we 
cannot fail to be struck by the steadily growing clear- 
ness of attempts on the part of those who have passed 
over to improve and multiply methods of communica- 
tion." 2 Sir Oliver Lodge, in characterising the same 
group of phenomena, says : " The scientific explorer 
feels secure and happy in his advance only when one 
and the same hypothesis will account for everything — 
both old and new — which he encounters. The one 
hypothesis which seems to me most nearly to satisfy 
that condition in this case is that we are in indirect 
touch with some part of the surviving personality of 
a scholar, and that scholar F. W. H. Myers." 3 

1 Barrett, op. cit., p. 237. 2 lb., p. 243. 3 Ib. f p. 244. 



Science and Immortality 81 

VII 

Without tying ourselves down to the above positive 
conclusions — since they are not accepted by all com- 
petent investigators — we may summarise the results of 
our excursion into the relations between present-day 
science and faith on the problem of immortality in the 
following way : 

The scientific world has moved away steadily from 
the materialistic and quasi-materialistic view of the 
origin of mind which held the field a generation ago. 
Even when a spiritual theory of reality is not professed, 
the tendency is to recognise the reality of the apparent 
control exercised by the mind over the bodily processes. 
The theory of mutual interaction between mind and 
body is now strongly held by many leading psycholo- 
gists. The recognition of the subconscious elements in 
human personality has gradually extended the range 
of facts to be taken into account, and immensely deep- 
ened the sense of the mystery of the spiritual life, and 
the insufficiency of the theory of its entire dependence 
on the bodily organism. And whether we accept the 
claims that the recent investigations of the S.P.R. 
have proved the survival by certain personalities of 
physical death or not, we must allow that they have at 
least immensely relieved the strain on faith in im- 
mortality, and opened up a door of hope that some day 
we may be forced by empirical evidence to believe that 
when the body dies, the soul still survives, carrying with it 
into the Unseen such riches (or dearth) of experience as 
it has accumulated in this life. To have arrived at this 
result is to make the task of religion, with its passionate 

6 



82 Faith and Immortality 

belief in the life to come, much easier in the age just 
dawning than it was in the generation just gone by. 

But let it not be supposed that science will ever 
make the work of religion superfluous in this region. 
" Psychical research " — once more to quote Sir W. F. 
Barrett — "though it may strengthen the foundations, 
cannot take the place of religion, using in its widest 
sense that much-abused word. For after all, it deals 
with the external, though it be in an unseen world ; and 
its chief value lies in the fulfilment of its work, whereby 
it reveals to us the inadequacy of the external, either 
here or hereafter, to satisfy the life of the soul. The 
psychical order is not the spiritual order, but a stepping- 
stone in the ascent of the soul to its own self-apprehen- 
sion, its conscious sharing in the eternal divine life, of 
which Frederick Myers thus foretells : 

"And from thee, o'er some lucid ocean-rim, 
The phantom Past shall as a shadow flee; 
And thou be in the spirit, and everything 
Born in the God that shall be born in thee." 1 

1 Psychical Research, p. 246. 



CHAPTER IV 

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 

FROM THE NATURE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, AND 

THE LIMITATIONS OF EXPERIENCE 



" Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
What rainbows teach and sunsets show? 
Verdict which accumulates 
From lengthening scroll of human fates, 
Voice of earth to earth returned, 
Prayers of saints that inly burned, — 
Saying, What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent ; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; 
Hearts' love will meet thee again." 

Emerson : Threnody. 



CHAPTER IV 

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 

FROM THE NATURE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, AND 

THE LIMITATIONS OF EXPERIENCE 

" Man's heart the Almighty set 
By secret and inviolable springs." 

Emerson. 

THE highest religious function of Science is to be a 
doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, and the 
utmost we can ask of her is to keep the door guarded, 
but open, that devout souls may enjoy the freedom of 
the sanctuary. For more than a generation she has 
tried to turn them away by asserting that there was 
only a ruined shrine, where once was a " living " temple. 
Being advised that she was transgressing her true func- 
tion, she has recently — rather unwillingly at first — been 
persuaded to stand aside, that religion may come to her 
own again. There are not wanting signs — if we may 
judge from the attitude of some of her chief votaries — 
that this acquiescent attitude will presently develop into 
something more positive, and that in the coming age 
Science will become the handmaid instead of the enemy 
of Faith, and welcome men to worship at the altar of 
that Deep Mystery that lies beyond the proper range of 
her own activities, but which she not long since called 
on them to ignore or even deny. 

85 ' 



86 Faith and Immortality 

We may go further, and say that (often without 
knowing it) Science — which we have defined as " ordered 
thought about phenomena " — has always, in her least 
worshipful mood, been dependent on a great act of faith 
for the fulfilment of her function. For does she not 
always begin her investigations on the assumption of 
the rationality of the Universe? Without some such 
postulate we cannot take the first step towards Know- 
ledge, even of the material order. That man is a reason- 
able being, and that corresponding to his nature there 
is a reasonable order and sequence of events in the 
objective world which he faces — these two theses must 
be at least tentatively taken for granted, before we can 
hope for fruitful results in any department of enquiry. 
Nor can there be any a priori proof of the correctness of 
these assumptions. They have to be taken for granted. 
There is indeed much to discourage us in our endeavour 
to justify them empirically, for our first impression of 
the multiform and diverse elements of experience is not 
that of order, but of confusion, often even of contradic- 
tion between this and that, these and those. It needs 
a passionate faith in the possibility and accessibility of 
knowledge before the quest for truth can begin, and 
long ere the goal is reached the intellectual quality and 
moral reserves of the seeker are taxed to the uttermost. 
It is only to the patient faithful student of Nature that 
the sunlit heights of truth unfold at last out of the 
inward confusion of thought with which he starts, and 
the outward confusion of fact, fiction and error, through 
which he blazes his path. The story of science is thus 
the story of a great adventure, the reward of which is 
the discovery of a wonderworld of order, beauty and 



Intimations of Immortality 87 

progress that lies beyond the many trials and failures 
of the way. The scientist is therefore the last man who 
should blame the assumptions of faith in our quest into 
the deeper meanings of reality on the spiritual side; 
nor can he find fault with us if we make further infer- 
ences from the moral reasonableness of the Universe. 
If the former must believe that there is an order of 
nature accessible to his faculties, the latter cannot be 
blamed for at least tentatively assuming that behind 
the tangle of phenomena and the confusions of experi- 
ence there is a moral and spiritual order in which these 
find their solution. This is the fundamental principle 
enunciated in the dictum of the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, " Without faith it is impossible to be well- 
pleasing unto God, for he that cometh unto Him must 
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them 
that seek after Him " (Heb. xi. 6). 

I 

In approaching our analysis of human nature on its 
spiritual side, we will begin with certain inferences sug- 
gested by the theory of Evolution in its bearing on our 
problem. 

That theory presents us with a vision of life as a great 
upward-climbing force or impulse which ever exhausts 
yet ever renews itself in its endeavour to master its 
environment. This elan vital, or vital impulse, starts in 
very dim and tentative beginnings. It has to deal with 
a difficult and intractable environment — the system of 
non-living matter which is always and everywhere in a 
state of lapse and " dissipation," and which resists at 
every step the "integration" necessary to an evolving 



88 Faith and Immortality 

system of life. But life is stubborn and resourceful, and 
while here and there and yonder it is driven back or 
pushed into blind alleys, it ever seeks the path of least 
resistance, and at last finds its way into the open. By 
steps infinitely slow and tentative it has developed 
forms of increasing complexity and vigour, till the world 
is filled with myriads of orders and genera and species 
in an ascending scale of physical efficiency and mental 
intelligence, at the head of which is Man himself. So 
tenacious of its ground and so resourceful in adaptation 
is this vital impulse that it has only allowed earlier 
forms to die out when they have failed to progress, or 
are proved to be in the way of the later and higher 
forms. Thus, many of the lower creatures still persist 
alongside the central line of developed and developing 
organisms, so that we can compare their characteristics, 
and note the stages of advance since they first appeared. 
When we make such a comparison between Man and 
his humbler fellow-creatures, we arrive at some startling 
conclusions. While he bears traces of his lowly origins 
deeply graven in his bodily frame and his psychic 
nature, he stands forth in sudden and unique pre- 
eminence in these fundamental qualities that are peculiar 
to himself. In him, consciousness becomes self-con- 
sciousness, instinct almost vanishes in reason, spon- 
taneity of movement develops into freedom of action, 
the mere response to sense-stimulus rises into the power 
of creative thought and act. And, most wonderful of 
all, by some secret process he has built up on the basis 
of the world of fact a world of " values," in which the 
measurements of more or less, here or there, now or 
then, have given place to a standard of good or bad, 



Intimations of Immortality 89 

better or worse. In other words, he has become a moral 
creature, and so has become a citizen of a new order, 
and the starting-point of a higher evolution. The new 
order is the system of spiritual realities which as yet he 
but dimly realises and faintly follows : the higher evolu- 
tion is that which out of the natural rises into the 
ethical, and has for its goal and end the pursuit of a 
spiritual perfection all-commanding in its authority, 
and yet utterly unattainable within the conditions and 
limits of this earthly life. 

Speaking generally, the upward march of life is 
marked by stages in which the organism puts forth new 
functions operating through special organs in corres- 
pondence with some fresh elements in the environment. 
Thus, accepting the dictum that the first forms of life 
were marine, and that some of them were periodically 
left between the daily tide-marks, these would gradually 
adapt themselves to a dual form of existence and become 
amphibious. Of these a certain portion would remain 
in that state, or even fall back and re-adapt themselves 
to aquatic conditions. Others would gradually discard 
the water, and put forth limbs and organs of breathing 
adapted to a terrestrial or aerial life. Meanwhile nearly 
all creatures would become sensitive and responsive to 
the world of light, and slowly develop vision : to the 
world of sound, and be able to hear : while terrestrial 
creatures would gradually adapt themselves in other 
directions to the complex conditions of life on land or in 
the air. The higher creatures would be in richer contact 
with their environment than the lower, and more thor- 
oughly master over it; but they would be least masters 
of that fart of their environment to which they had last 



90 Faith and Immortality 

begun to be adapted. Again, the amount of adaptation 
(or preferably mastery) is always in strict proportion 
to the vital needs of an organism. The eye of the eagle 
is more perfect than that of the bat, because it needs 
long and clear vision for its life-purpose, but the bat has 
as much clearness of vision as is normally necessary for 
its well-being. Developing creatures are in imperfect 
but progressive correspondence with that circle in the 
total environment into touch with which they are slowly 
rising, but when they have reached their maturity as a 
species this correspondence is practically complete. 
Evolution is the gradually successful attempt to invade 
and conquer fresh and higher ranges of environment in 
the interests of a functionally enriching organism. 

Now man has all the marks of a creature who is push- 
ing upward into correspondences with a fresh environ- 
ment. This new environment is the world of spiritual 
realities. His physical development is complete; his 
mental conquest of the world is proceeding at a rapid 
rate (never more rapidly than at present), but his 
spiritual evolution is still in its first stage of tentative 
and unstable equilibrium. Man's soul is filled with 
that " divine discontent " which makes the lower ranges 
of his environment unsatisfying to his growing nature, 
and impels him to ever-renewed efforts for a clearer 
vision and a surer foothold in this higher world. The 
story of his moral and spiritual aspirations is thus full 
of disquietude, and he is haunted with a feeling of per- 
petual failure and futility. Often he falls back weary 
and exhausted from his quest, and tries to bury him- 
self in the easier and more familiar satisfactions and 
activities of his psychic and sensuous nature. But, 



Intimations of Immortality 91 

having tasted, however faintly, the quality of these 
higher relationships, the race has never succeeded in 
falling back contentedly into the lower world from 
which it had begun to emerge. Hence the dislocations, 
lapses, recoveries and periodic upward strivings of Man's 
higher and better nature. Ever ill at ease in a world 
that has grown too small for him, he is impelled to reach 
out, often with strong crying and bitter tears, into the 
new order that looms up so indistinctly and yet so 
alluringly before his dawning vision, and which he has 
begun to recognise as his true home. This involves a 
conflict within as well as without him, and accounts for 
the pain and travail, as well as the occasional joy and 
ecstasy of his spiritual experience. 

And here we come upon a fact of measureless interest 
and significance. It has often been pointed out that in 
the conquest of the lower (material) circles of environ- 
ment, all effort after adaptation and mastery has to 
come from the side of the organism. Nature at best 
lends herself to the uses of the creatures which she has 
brought forth, but she never actively aids them in their 
endeavours to come into correspondence with her. 
Impersonally and blindly she goes her way and fulfils 
her processes, but she has no care for her children : 
having brought them forth, she will as readily slay them 
with her heat and cold, her a^idents and cataclysms, 
as delight them with her spring promise, and feed them 
with her fruitful harvests. But man has been haunted 
from of old with a sense that the spiritual environment 
is not only responsive to his needs, but in active fellow- 
ship with himself. For this higher world, in virtue of 
its spiritual character, is a world of personal relation- 



92 Faith and Immortality 

ships; and personal relationships, in order to issue in 
any fruitfulness of intercourse, must be marked with 
reciprocity. Thus, religion is a twofold process. It is 
a process of aspiration and longing on the one side, and 
of revelation and grace on the other. It is man seeking 
fellowship with God : it is God seeking fellowship with 
man. Experience tells us that this dual end is not 
easy of attainment. Man's incipient spirituality is 
weak: it is hampered by the strength and passion of 
a lower nature already full-grown, which ever drags 
him down into its own abysses when he would strive 
upwards towards his dawning ideals. This being so, 
and God's method of creation and Providence being 
evolutionary, He cannot reveal Himself to man, or lift 
man up to Himself by one transcendent act of conquest. 
Only by a long historical process of training and dis- 
cipline, marked by many pauses and retrogressions, has 
the end been achieved ; " God, having of old time spoken 
to the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in 
divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken 
unto us in His Son " (Heb. i. I, 2). And even though 
the objective revelation is complete in its essentials, its 
assimilation has still to be made, and this has proved 
so slow — thus heavy is the handicap of imperfection and 
the tendency to retrogress — that only a few individuals 
throughout the ages have been able or willing to rise 
into full and rewarding relations to the higher world 
of personal values revealed to mankind in the Gospel. 
The many have either been so lost in the lower environ- 
ments of life, or are so lukewarm in their response to the 
higher, that we are still impelled to ask Peter's painful 
question, " Are there few that be saved ?" 



Intimations of Immortality 93 

But here comes the crucial point — the world of 
spiritual values and relationships is timeless and 
eternal, and the scope of this life is so restricted that it 
is impossible to attain here even at the best to full and 
permanent possession of its good. And therefore, if 
man's " chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him 
for ever," and if this is a rational universe, we are 
impelled to the conclusion that this life is not all, but 
that the relationship with God, begun here, demands 
another stage of being where it can be pursued to its 
destined consummation. If we can only reach the edge 
of this ocean of benefit and blessing in this life, and this 
life is all, then is existence a riddle indeed, and under 
the most favourable conditions it is full of disappoint- 
ment. If, on the other hand, it is but the initial stage in 
a process of development of unknown range and beauty, 
then the spiritual stresses which make this life so hard, 
and its spiritual conquests so imperfect, are at least 
well worth the effort and the pain. Man's earthly state 
would thus suggest that this life , is a preface to a 
higher, and that death is but the doorway into a larger 
life. And what Reason thus suggests as its conclusion, 
Faith affirms as its postulate. 



II 

Let us come closer to the problem of the nature of 
Personality, and the light thus thrown on human 
destiny. 

1. What is meant by saying that in man conscious- 
ness becomes self-consciousness? 

Consciousness is difficult to define, but it may be 



94 Faith and Immortality 

described as a series of sensations or "states of aware- 
ness" of certain objects in the environment or of cer- 
tain inner experiences arising primarily out of func- 
tional changes in the organism. These states of con- 
sciousness, however complex or confused, are always 
in time — i.e., they are constantly altering in character 
and intensity, forming an endless stream of experiences 
which constitute the ever-changing content of the mind 
during waking life, being interrupted only during sleep, 
or under accident or disease. So far there is no ground 
for believing in any essential difference between the 
mental history of man and that of the lower creatures. 
In our subjective experience, however, we do not 
identify ourselves with this stream of consciousness, but 
refer it to a permanent centre of experience which we 
call the soul or self. When we are aware of a sound or 
a perfume, a taste or a touch, a thrill of joy or twinge 
of pain, we do not become a sound, perfume, taste, touch, 
pleasure, or pain; these exist for us; we have them but 
do not identify ourselves with them; rather we clearly 
distinguish between the permanent conscious centre 
which is our ego, and these experiences which we refer 
to it as the abiding subject of them all. This perma- 
nent entity which has experiences, and is self-conscious, 
is the constitutive principle of personality. It cannot 
be a phenomenon, for it is that which binds all 
phenomena into a conscious unity. Nor is it the mere 
sum of our conscious states, for while it is in the very 
nature of these states that they are always changing, 
the self abides amid all changes. And what is true of 
sensations or conscious states is equally true of those 
acts of comparison or judgment which are the phases 



Intimations of Immortality 95 

of our intellectual life, and of those impulses or efficient 
movements of our will, in virtue of which we react 
causally on the objective or external world. Thus, both 
our passive experiences and our outgoings of intellectual 
and volitional energy imply a self-conscious subject to 
which they refer, or from which they proceed. When- 
ever we say " I see," or " I know," or " I will," we are 
affirming an experience which changes, and a soul or 
self that abides amidst all its changes. Consciousness 
is the experience of things that pass, self-consciousness 
is the sense of a personality that remains, and which is 
constant amid all the vicissitudes of experience. The 
question for us here is whether or not this changeless 
self is an eternal or immortal entity, over which death 
has no jurisdiction or power. 

Some would say that because it has a beginning, so it 
must have an end. In order to avoid this conclusion 
some writers {e.g., Plato) have denied the temporal 
origin to the soul, conceiving it as inherently eternal, 
without beginning or end. Immanuel Fichte and 
others in modern times have for the same reason affirmed 
the pre-existence of the soul. This, however, though 
held as a firm belief by nearly all Eastern thinkers, and 
by possibly an increasing number of people in our own 
country, is a precarious premise in the argument for 
immortality. The only psychological ground for such 
an inference — the facts of heredity — can be explained 
in another way. Nor does it follow that if the soul 
has had a beginning it must necessarily come to an 
end. " If," as Dr. Martineau puts it, " at a certain 
stage in the development of the cosmos, the Supreme 
Mind set up at a given centre a personal subject of 



g6 Faith and Immortality 

thought and will like His own . . . what is to prevent 
this from being a freehold in perpetuity? . . . Why 
may not the communicated Divine nature endure as 
long as the uncommunicated Source on which it lives ? 
So far as thought, and love, and goodness are related 
to Time, their relation is not cyclical but progressive, 
not returning to their beginnings, but opening out into 
indefinite enlargement and acceleration. The dictum, 
therefore, that whatever begins must end, is one to 
which we are not bound to surrender : and the only 
pre-existence which we need allow to the Soul is latent 
within its Divine Source, ere yet its idea has taken effect 
and the personal monad been set up." 1 

Nor does the dependence of the soul on the body for 
its present forms and phases of consciousness necessitate 
the conclusion that the soul should cease to persist 
when the body dies. That conclusion would imply that 
the body is the cause of the soul, which, if the reasoning 
in the last chapter be valid, is not the case, their relation 
being one of interaction. It is true that when this 
relation comes to an end, the body decays : but the soul 
may conceivably survive the separation even if the body 
fails to do so. 

2. What is meant by saying that "instinct in the 
human -personality almost vanishes in reason"? 

We say almost, but by no means quite. For there are 

1 A Study in Religion, vol. ii. (second editio», p. 334). " Every- 
thing which has once originated will endure for ever so soon as 
it possesses an unalterable value for the coherent system of the 
world ; but it will in turn cease to be, if this is not the case " 
(Lotze). This is the metaphysical equivalent of the physiological 
law that an organ is persistent so long as it functions properly, 
and begins to atrophy when it fails to do so. 



Intimations of Immortality 97 

powerful instincts buried deep in our mental and bodily 
constitution, which have a profound influence on our 
conduct. We instinctively seek for food, shelter, safety, 
sex, and many other forms of organic satisfaction. 
Probably also such intellectual predispositions as the 
sense of causality, inference, the belief in an objective 
world, etc., have an instinctive element in them. It is 
clear enough, however, as Professor Bergson has so 
brilliantly expounded to us in his Creative Evolution, 
that while nature has moved towards torpidity in the 
vegetable world, and towards an overpowering develop- 
ment of instinct in the animal, she has arrived pre- 
eminently at intellectual consciousness in Man. He is 
the "reasoning animal" par excellence. His growth is 
away from instinct, and it is towards rationality. Now 
rationality implies consciousness of distinction between 
the mind and its objects : and it carries with it an ever- 
increasing power over its objects. Man's sovereignty 
over Nature is a rational sovereignty. He masters her 
secrets by reasoning his way through the tangle and 
confusion of her phenomena into the order that really 
unifies them, so assuming control over her forces. In 
so far as he rises above Nature and becomes her master, 
he proclaims himself to have penetrated into a higher 
supersensuous order, of which Nature is but an outer 
court or ante-chamber, and which is bis distinctive 
region of activity as a self-conscious and rational being. 
To have gained foothold here carries with it a presump- 
tion that his fate is no longer bound up irrevocably 
within the limitations of the physical world, nor of that 
tiny portion of it which he calls his body. Death at 
last claims that body for its own; but it does not fol- 

7 



98 Faith and Immortality 

low that man's sovereign and immaterial mind shares 
in the same catastrophe. 

3. What is meant by saying that in Man spontaneity 
of movement develops into freedom of action? 

It is of the very nature of life that on one side it 
should be full of spontaneity, impulse and adventure. 
It flings itself experimentally on its surroundings, 
"bites" into time and space, and fights hard against 
the limitations of its non-living but by no means 
inactive environment. As soon as any living creature 
loses the spirit of adventure in the direction of its own 
appropriate function, it begins to be at the mercy of 
the disintegrative forces around it, and to decay : it is 
on the way to death. The higher it is in the scale of 
being, and the more living it is, then the more power- 
fully is this spontaneous principle manifested. In this, 
too, Man is supreme. 

Spontaneity, however, is not freedom, but only its 
psychic condition and prophecy. The restless move- 
ments of the animal nature, seeking satisfaction for its 
cravings now in this and now in that direction, indicate 
the intensity of its vitality, but they are still conditioned 
by fixed laws and limitations. It is only when unified 
in a personality, and directed towards conscious and 
self-chosen ends, that the forces of spontaneity are 
transfigured into the factors of freedom, take on an 
ethical quality, and out of the elements of behaviour 
develop the principles of character. The creature who 
has arrived at this stage has attained to more than the 
control of its environment; it has developed into mas- 
tery of its own inner impulses, and become a free, self- 
governed moral being. By so doing it has left the 



Intimations of Immortality 99 

more natural world behind it, and proclaimed itself a 
citizen of the realm of spiritual freedom — nay, a son of 
the Highest, sharing His nature, and taken up into His 
fellowship. In this fact lies another intimation of man's 
immortality, or at least of its possibility and promise. 
The fact that man can misuse this freedom is no proof 
of the contrary; the utmost that can be inferred from 
the fact of sin, is that immortality may possibly be for- 
feited through alienation and separation from God, the 
fountain of life. 

4. Finally, what is implied in saying that in Man the 
mere response to sense-stimulus rises into the power of 
creative thought and will? 

Responsiveness is the passive side of spontaneity — 
the capacity to adapt itself to environment. Its sub- 
jective side is feeling, as the subjective side of spon- 
taneity is will. Now, in the lower ranges of life action 
is mainly dependent on the stimulus of environment on 
the sensitive tissues of the organism. As we rise in the 
scale of being we find not less sensitiveness, but more 
reactive energy; and with the increase of spontaneous 
energy an increasing control over the conditions of 
existence. The limits of control, however, are predeter- 
mined by the life-interests of the creature. Every 
animal can only influence its environment just so far as 
its place in the order of Nature is thereby made secure, 
and its life functions rendered more efficient. 

In man this law of parsimony or economy in the 
distribution of aptitudes and powers is transcended. 
His responsiveness to stimulus is wider and finer and 
more intense than is the case with any other creature. 
As already noted, he is alive to aspects of reality to 



ioo Faith and Immortality 

which all others are totally insensitive and unconscious, 
and which have no relevance to his mere persistence as 
a species. In spite of this, he is not more but less at 
the mercy of his surroundings. There is in him the gift 
of controlling, co-ordinating, and rearranging his impres- 
sions and feelings into fresh syntheses in which their 
intensity is increased and their significance is trans- 
formed. The given world of feeling thus becomes 
material for an ideal world of artistic and spiritual 
values. And this inner world of values, into which the 
outer world of mere fact and happening is transmuted, 
is no mere subjectivity, but a stable, august, and per- 
manent order of relationships transcending space and 
time, which must be discovered by each for himself, and 
yet is the same for all. For the mind it is truth, for 
the feeling it is beauty, for the will it is virtue or holi- 
ness. This is the highest attribute of Man, proclaiming 
him at once the master of the natural order and the ser- 
vant of the spiritual order. He wins his way creatively 
from the one into the other, and in doing so arrives at 
his proper status and true selfhood. As soon as he 
attains to this stage of experience, he knows that this 
energy and achievement is what he was made for — that 
this is his proper standard and quality of life as a 
man. The materials he extracts from the natural 
evanescent order ; the results of his transforming energy 
are spiritual and permanent. In the symmetries of art 
he recombines the colours and sounds and forms of 
matter and life into ideal harmonies; in science he dis- 
covers the order, and uses the forces of matter for his 
own ends; in ethics and religion he extracts the higher 
values of experience for the perfecting of his soul, and 



Intimations of Immortality 101 

for the realisation of true relations with other per- 
sonalities. 

All this proves that Man's place in Nature is one 
which transcends the natural order, which it is his func- 
tion to shape into higher and eternal values. Born in 
Nature, like other creatures, it is his business to rise out 
of the natural into the spiritual, and by transmuting 
fact into experience, and experience into character, 
and character into holiness, to proclaim himself a 
child of the Eternal and an heir of immortality. It is 
thus suggested that though Man was born to die, he was 
not born that all of him should die when this life, whose 
mortality he shares with lower creatures, comes to its 
inevitable end. If there is any rational meaning in life, 
it cannot be that a creature who is impelled by all that 
is good and great in him to rise by untold effort, 
measureless sacrifice, and endless aspiration into the 
realisation of a world of eternal values, should cease to 
exist simply because his physical frame is worn out. 
Such a destiny would involve a hopeless anticlimax, and 
the very values attained would lose all their validity, 
since, apart from the personalities possessing them (or 
possessed by them), they have no existence, and there- 
fore no value. For — as we have already noted — what 
is heroism if there be no hero; love, with no lover and 
none to love; truth, apart from a mind that knows it to 
be true ; holiness, except as an attribute of an actual soul 
that is holy? They are but abstractions, a memory, 
and a regret. Our very homage to beauty, goodness 
and truth as eternal entities, contains an implicit faith 
in the permanence of the personality which experiences 
them. Even those who have no explicit belief in an 



102 Faith and Immortality 

after life can only justify their admiration for spiritual 
values on the assumption of their permanence, and there 
is no permanence for anything spiritual apart from the 
permanence of personality, of which they are the inalien- 
able attributes. 

True, it is only the comparatively few who in this life 
attain to any high standard of spiritual excellence. 
The many seem for the most part contented with the 
life of sensuous experience, and make little or no effort 
to rise out of it. The question, however, is not so much 
of the actual as of the -possible; it is not of what man is, 
but of what he was manifestly made for. Theoretically, 
of course, it is conceivable that persistence of life be- 
yond the grave depends on the attainment of the con- 
ditions of survival in this life. There are, however, 
other alternatives to this theory, with which we shall 
deal later ; here it is only needful to point out that they 
exist. Our main purpose here is to unfold the implica- 
tions of human personality in their bearing on the 
problem of immortality. We contend that these more 
than suggest, on the assumption that the universe is a 
rational order and not a mere chaos of meaningless facts, 
that in Man's higher nature we have a presumptive 
argument that this life is not all, and that the scale of 
our being demands further scope beyond the grave for 
the satisfaction of our moral aspirations and the fulfil- 
ment of our spiritual possibilities. 

Ill 
This argument is immensely strengthened when we 
contrast the large outlook and unrealised potentialities 
of human nature with the narrow scope, uncertain foot- 



Intimations of Immortality 103 

hold, and manifold contingencies of our earthly experi- 
ence. 

One of the impressions that come home to most men 
at one time or another is a profound sense of the 
apparent irrelevancy of their higher life in face of the 
oppressive vastness of creation and the unheeding play 
of physical forces. This feeling has been greatly in- 
creased since the rise of the Copernican astronomy, and 
the discovery of the theory of evolution. The psalmist, 
even in the days of a merely parochial view of the 
universe, was sufficiently impressed with it to cry out as 
he gazed at the vast heavens above him and the in- 
different earth beneath him, "What is man that thou 
art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest 
him ?" (Ps. viii. 4). How much less significant does 
he seem to be now when our outlook on space has re- 
duced the planet on which we live to a tiny pin-point 
in the sky, a mere speck of matter among myriads of 
stars whose parallax we cannot take, and of whose 
colossal magnitude we can make but a dim and uncer- 
tain guess ; and when our outlook on time has made the 
normal space of our life but a moment in a limitless 
succession of millenniums ! Our uncertain foothold on 
life in a world where the current of cosmic forces moves 
on in sublime heedlessness of our joys and sorrows, our 
efforts and ideals, is another experience whose poignant 
frequency is enough to bring discouragement to the 
most buoyant temperament, and to put our finest 
optimisms under eclipse. It seems impossible to believe 
that a being whose life at most is compassed within a 
few decades, and whose physical insignificance is so 
absolute in view of the illimitable leagues of space and 



104 Faith and Immortality 

aeons of time, should have any abiding significance 
in the deeper world of reality; and there are living 
philosophers who, oppressed with this unspeakable 
contrast, confess their utter inability to justify man's 
instinctive sense of his own paramount significance in 
a universe that seems to produce and to slay him with 
the same impassive indifference as it does the midge of 
an hour, or the lily of a day. 

A deeper consideration of our problem, however, en- 
tirely reverses the significance of this contrast. Objec- 
tively man is but one among myriads of insignificant 
earthly species, and shares to the full the contingencies, 
accidents, diseases and inabilities of their lot. Sub- 
jectively, however, he stands out as the one supremely 
significant created being in the universe — so far as we 
know it. Brief as is the span of his existence, while he 
lives all else exists for him. The broad heavens and all 
they contain, the ample earth with its seas and moun- 
tains, beasts and birds, are to him but forms of con- 
sciousness, objects of thought. What are the forms and 
conditions of their existence apart from his seeing eye 
and reflective mind, no soul can tell; all we know of 
them is what is expressible in terms of our own experi- 
ence. If consciousness is the only reality — a dictum 
that finds its votaries (as we have seen) among an in- 
creasing number of philosophers — then is the human 
mind the typical reality, for the only form of conscious- 
ness known to us is our own ; even the Divine conscious- 
ness being only an inference from that which we our- 
selves experience. And if — avoiding this perilously 
subjective dictum — we recognise the quasi-independent 
reality of the objective universe, it is only as a co- 



Intimations of Immortality 105 

ordinate of our own subjectivity, or of some eternal 
subjectivity akin to ours. The oppressive magnitude 
of creation is therefore of no significance in view 
of the fact that even this is but a phase of our own 
experience ; and the mind that can feel its own compara- 
tive nothingness thereby proclaims its supremacy over 
the material universe which knows nothing of its own 
magnitude and glory. "Man," writes Pascal, "is but 
a feeble reed, trembling in the midst of creation; but 
then, he is endowed with thought. It does not need 
the universe to arm for his destruction. A breath of 
wind, a drop of water, will suffice to kill him. But, 
though the universe were to fall on man and crush him, 
he would be greater in his death than the universe in 
its victory, for he would be conscious of defeat, and it 
would not be conscious of victory." 

Thus, if science proclaims the insignificance of man 
in view of the stability and range and vastness of crea- 
tion as a whole, religious philosophy tends to rehabili- 
tate him as the supreme issue of creative life, in which 
it bursts into its finest flower, and breaks into con- 
sciousness of its own existence and meaning. There is 
here a qualitative difference, which gives Man his place 
at the head of all things, and in so doing takes away 
the sting of the fact that his physical frame is so frail, 
and his span of earthly life so brief. Wedded to a 
body that inherits the animal instincts of a myriad 
generations of lowly ancestors, and has to take its 
chance among the contingencies of the physical order, 
his spirit proclaims itself one with the Eternal Soul of 
things, and therefore not likely to be quenched with 
the breakdown of his physical frame, or sunk "with 



106 Faith and Immortality 

the blossom and the bee " in the waters of a death from 
which there is no resurrection. Oppressed by the lapse 
of years and the waning of his physical vitality; tossed 
hither and thither on the waves of chance, and amid the 
play of circumstance; beaten to the very earth by the 
blows of misfortune; faced at last by the onset of the 
inevitable end, his soul, enriched by the bitterest ex- 
periences, and disciplined by the profoundest sorrows, 
often rises at the last into a supreme intuition of its 
own deathless quality, and faces the last enemy, not 
with the depression of a defeated captive, but with the 
assured faith of a destined conqueror. Is there no 
validity in the intuitions of such a faith ? Then, in- 
deed, "all is vanity and vexation of spirit," and the 
creative impulse which has climbed "through all the 
spires of form" up to this pinnacle of attainment and 
promise, comes to its victory only to confess its con- 
fusion and defeat. There is something in the magnifi- 
cent heroisms called forth by the disastrous war that 
has been raging from Flanders to Mesopotamia which 
gives a particular and poignant meaning to these con- 
siderations. That men should live for ends which can- 
not possibly be attained within the compass of their 
own individual lives is in itself an indication of some- 
thing in human nature which is above time and space; 
but that millions of men, in the first glow and passion 
of their youth, and therefore at the time when they 
crave most for immediate and personal satisfactions, 
should be ready, freely and joyously, to surrender their 
all and to offer their lives for liberties they will never 
share, is a transcendent indication of a deathless quality 
in their nature. If this life be all there is for us, there 



Intimations of Immortality 107 

is no rational ground on which we can ask one man to 
give his life for another, and there is no rational ground 
why he should offer it himself for ideal ends or for 
future benefits for the race. The instinct which prompts 
such an act is spiritual; it wells up from depths which 
have no relevancy to the conditions of our earthly life, 
and is directed to ends that outreach them. It is 
nothing to the point that few of our soldiers do this 
from any conscious motive, or realise the nobility of 
their attitude ; if anything, this enhances its significance, 
since it emerges from a region of their nature that lies 
beyond the range of consciousness, or shows up bril- 
liantly through the disturbance of secondary motives. 
And the fact that this heroic quality is shown not by 
select and highly endowed individuals, but by ordinary 
men, proves that it is normal and inherent in human 
nature as such. A being who is capable of such a tem- 
per, either shows himself incurably irrational, or claims 
that there is within him a principle which is intuitively 
felt to be deathless. Still more is this manifest in those 
cases where men suffer for a faith which can bring no 
earthly reward to anyone through its vindication, but 
which is felt by its votaries to be not only worth living 
for, but worth dying for. Such acts lift human person- 
ality to a plane of values incommensurable by any 
earthly or temporal standards, and suggest the Divine 
origin and destiny of the soul. 



PART II 
HISTORICAL 

CHAPTER I 

THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY. 
AS UNFOLDED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 



" The Hebrew thinker . . . came down from his thought of 
God upon the world; he did not rise from the world to his 
thought of God. His primary thought of God explained to him 
the world, both its existence and the course of events upon it ; 
these did not suggest to him either the existence or the char- 
acter of God, these being unknown to him. The thought of 
the Hebrew, and his contemplation of providence and life, were 
never of the nature of a search after God whom he did not 
know, but always of the nature of a recognition and observa- 
tion of God whom he already knew." — A. B. Davidson. 



CHAPTER I 

THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY, 
AS UNFOLDED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

11 For all the Past, read true, is Prophecy, 
And all the first are hauntings of the last, 
And all the Springs are flashlights of one Spring.' ' 

Francis Thompson. 

POWERFUL and impressive as are the arguments 
in favour of a belief in immortality, drawn from a 
consideration of the constitution of human personality, 
they have validity only for those who, facing the uni- 
verse as a rational and moral order, believe (at least 
implicitly) in God. This is seen negatively in the fact 
that those thinkers who reject or neglect the hypothesis 
of a personal Creator, however high their conception of 
human personality, fail to draw from that conception 
the inference of a future life. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, there is seldom any adequate sense of personality 
among non-theistic or even Pantheistic philosophers. 
To the former man is a nexus of perishable psychical 
factors; to the latter he is a passing phase of Divine 
self-manifestation — a wave of conscious life that pre- 
sently subsides into the undifferentiated sea of infinite 
Being. And it is seen, positively, in the fact that 
Theism, or belief in a personal God, is always accom- 
panied by a more or less vivid faith in the immortality 

in 



1 1 2 Faith and Immortality 

of the soul. In a word, our doctrine of man and his 
fate is organically interwoven with our doctrine of God. 
This is another way of saying that in the last resort 
the religious argument for immortality is the only one 
that can stand the ultimate test. Our final hope of 
survival in a future state of existence is conditioned by 
our experience of God rather than of man. 

A brief outline of the rise of the doctrine of immor- 
tality in Old Testament times, and of its consummation 
in the New, will be our best way of testing the validity 
of this contention. We limit ourselves to this line of 
enquiry because only in the history of thought among 
the Hebrew nation do we find any real and fruitful 
advance in handling this problem. All ancient nations 
believed in some form of survival for the soul after 
death, but only in that particular line of development 
do we come at last to an adequate and permanent 
doctrine of immortality. It is certainly the only one 
that can stand the shocks of modern physical science 
and agnostic philosophy. In no other way can we 
find an adequate comfort in the instabilities of experi- 
ence, and a sufficient encouragement to live the life of 
the spirit in a world of temptation and death. 

The subject is one of great complexity, but we shall 
endeavour to avoid all but those aspects of the long 
religious development of Israel from the time of Moses 
till the coming of Christ that are essential for our pur- 
pose. This may be divided into three periods — Pre- 
prophetic Jahwism, Prophetism, and Apocalyptic. 
In the first the doctrine of survival held among the 
Hebrews was an entirely heathen conception, out of 
relation to their distinctive religious tenets. In the 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 113 

second the doctrine previously held concerning the 
after-life was being slowly brought into relation to the 
theology of the prophetic writers. In the third, some- 
thing like real harmony was attained between the 
mature Jewish doctrine of God and that of the future 
life. In all these there was a process of revelation on 
the one side, and of growing apprehension of a Divine 
power in human life on the other, which led on steadily 
to the final revelation of the nature of God in Jesus 
Christ, who, in revealing the Father, finally brought 
" life and immortality to light in His Gospel." 

It is of the utmost importance to note at the outset 
that during all these centuries of religious develop- 
ment the growth and nature of Hebrew belief in a future 
life depended on two determining facts — (1) the 
gradual unfolding of the character of God from that of 
a mere tribal deity to that of the Holy and Universal 
Father of mankind; and (2) the many overwhelming 
vicissitudes in the experiences of the nation and of 
devout individuals during those stressful centuries. 
Out of the interplay of these two factors rose that faith 
in immortality which prevailed substantially among 
the Jewish people in the first century B.C., which Jesus 
received as His spiritual heritage, and out of which He 
unfolded His own distinctive and final revelation. Of 
these two factors the former was the more important, 
but it would have been largely inoperative without the 
latter. The manifestation of God's will for mankind 
in the future state as well as in the present was mediated 
through the tragic experiences of the chosen nation as 
interpreted by its greatest personalities. If we grasp 
these two facts in their spiritual bearings, everything 

8 



1 1 4 Faith and Immortality 

else falls into line; a flood of light is thrown on the 
eschatological situation in the time when the New 
Testament was written: and we are able to formulate 
with some confidence a constructive theory of the essen- 
tial Christian doctrine. 

I 

Let us, then, begin our survey with a brief account of 
the pre-prophetic conception of God held by the Hebrew 
nation. 

This was, broadly speaking, Henotheistic or Monola- 
trous — i.e., Jahweh was conceived of as Israel's God, 
and Israel as God's chosen nation. There were other 
nations and other gods — tribal, national, territorial; 
among these Jahweh alone had any religious signi- 
ficance for Israel, except when (as not infrequently 
happened owing to the vicissitudes of war) they for- 
sook Him for a time for other deities. Through His 
deliverance of His people from the slavery of Egypt, 
He had entered into an abiding covenant with them, 
and however faithless they might occasionally be to 
Him, He was always faithful to them. Thus, from the 
outset there was an ethical note in the religion of Israel, 
and prosperity or misfortune was always interpreted as 
a manifestation not of any capricious attribute in God, 
but as the apportionment of reward or punishment to 
the people for their conduct. When they obeyed His 
will, and honoured His worship, they believed they 
were happy and prosperous ; if they failed in their duty, 
misfortune always followed. Conversely, when they 
were beaten in battle, or visited with plague or tempest 
or any form of calamity, they were led to examine them- 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 115 

selves, that they might discover in what direction they 
had failed in their duty. This rough and ready rela- 
tion between religious conduct and outward experience 
was sufficiently true to facts to carry the nation through 
centuries of wavering fortune without raising any very 
troublesome problems. Imperfect as such a theory must 
now be held to be, it had an enormous influence in 
deepening the spiritual life of the nation, and keeping 
it faithful to its covenantal relation to its God. At the 
same time it developed a belief in Him as an essen- 
tially holy and righteous deity, who was active in pro- 
moting their social welfare because profoundly con- 
cerned in their moral condition. 

It is important to remember that during the whole of 
this period— down to the rise of prophetism in the ninth 
century B.C. — the religious unit was always the nation, 
and not the individual, who had no religious signi- 
ficance except as a member of the commonwealth with 
which the original covenant had been made. The indi- 
vidual shared in the corporate lot and responsibility — 
for every community consists in the last resort of single 
persons — but as an individual he had no covenant of 
his own to appeal to ; if therefore he shared in the com- 
mon lot of weal or woe, he had no ground of protest 
or complaint, and must take his chance, whatever hap- 
pened to him, without demur. In other words, while 
he had social duties, he had no personal rights, and no 
claim for individual treatment, except as he helped or 
hindered the general well-being. 

This being so, it is clear that the doctrine of God in 
early Hebraism could have no influence on any ideas 
that might be current concerning a future existence for 



1 1 6 Faith and Immortality 

the individual. The only future that was significant 
for religion at such a stage was the future of the nation. 
Interest in this was intense from the earliest times. 
Jahweh was a great God and would ensure a great 
future for His chosen people. Thus, the eyes of law- 
giver and seer, priest and people, were ever eagerly 
directed to the time when Israel would be a mighty 
nation and control the destiny of the world. To secure 
such sovereignty was the passionate national ideal, and 
to it all personal interests were subordinated. In the 
glow of this great Hope, the individual was accounted 
as a mere item in the programme, who must account 
himself happy if, whether living or dying, he were used 
of Jahweh to bring His great ends to pass. 

What, then, was the current theory concerning the fate 
of the individual at death ? 

In common with all ancient peoples the Hebrews 
firmly believed in the survival of the " soul " or " spirit," 
but in an attenuated and ineffective sense. It is gener- 
ally held that in this form the doctrine was a survival 
of primitive ancestor-worship. The further back we go 
the more vivid is this belief, the state of the dead being 
conceived of as a feeble but faithful reproduction of their 
earthly condition. Thus they were held to share in the 
vicissitudes of their posterity and to be able to benefit 
or injure them. 1 Therefore the living were careful to 
show great honour, and even to offer sacrifices, to the 
dead. The teraphim were ancestral images of a crude 
kind, and were held sacred and consulted as oracles; 
indeed, they were the household gods which formed 
part of the furniture of well-to-do families (cf. Gen. 

1 Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of the Future 
Life, p. 20. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 117 

xxxi. 19, 3035; 1 Sam. xix. 13-16; 2 Kings xxiii. 24; 
also Exod. xx. 2-6). According to Dillmann, this cult 
of household gods was firmly established in the family 
of Jacob before it went down into Egypt, and must have 
flourished among the people after their settlement in 
Canaan, down to the latest period of the monarchy. 
Many other current and long-continued customs bear 
witness to the belief in survival of bodily death. The 
soul being considered as still in some dim sense con- 
nected with the dead body, great reverence was shown 
to the latter, both in preserving it from injury or out- 
rage, and in securing burial for it; this was always, if 
possible, in the family grave (cf. Gen. xv. 15 ; xlix. 29-33 J 
1. 25, etc.). In a wider sense the graves of the tribe 
or nation were regarded as united in one. Thus arose 
the conception of Sheol, or Place of the Dead, believed 
to be ultimately the final abode of all mankind, good 
and bad, "an idea which dates back probably to the 
period when the Hebrew clans dwelt in the Valley of 
the Euphrates, and shared this belief with the Baby- 
lonians of the time." A man won his chance of joining 
his particular family or clan in Sheol by being interred 
in his family grave. 

What were the Hebrew ideas concerning the condi- 
tions of existence in Sheol ? Like the Hades and Tar- 
tarus of the Greeks, it was not a place to be desired. 
The dead were conceived of as dwelling in a dark 
and barren place below the earth, in a feeble and 
ineffectual condition, without occupation or hope. It 
is important to remember that Jahweh had no jurisdic- 
tion or power over this shadowland of the dead, His 
sway extending only over the upper world of the living 



n8 Faith and Immortality 

— i.e.. His own people and land (cf. Ps. lxxxiii. 5 ; 
xxxi. 22; Isa. xxxviii. 18). He could not favour or 
help the dead; they had passed beyond His range of 
influence, were banished out of His sight and care. 
The moral distinctions of the living world did not per- 
sist beyond the grave ; there was " one end to the 
righteous and the wicked" Such a view must have 
greatly emphasised the fear of death. This shadow 
that lies like a pall over the future beyond the grave is 
never really lifted in the Old Testament. All that was 
desirable for the Hebrew, as for all other peoples was 
found this side of the inevitable end. We have to go 
to the later extra-canonical writings for the first authen- 
tic ray of light, the earliest gleam of hope, as to what 
lies behind the veil. 

Another feature of the Old Testament view of the after- 
life is that as time goes on that view becomes more and 
more gloomy. Sheol is the land of forgetfulness, silence 
and destruction ; the dead cannot return to visit the liv- 
ing, and know not what may befall them ; all the inhabi- 
tants of Sheol, whether kings or beggars, oppressor or 
oppressed, good or bad, are buried in profound sleep and 
forgetfulness (Ps. lxxxviii. 12, xciv. 17, cxv. 17; Job 
iii. 14-20, xxviii. 2, vii. 4, 9, xiv. 12, 21 ; Eccles. ix. 5, 10). 
This conception of human nature and of the state of the 
dead issued historically in the view of the Sadducees in 
the time of Christ, who believed that there were neither 
" angels nor spirits " (Acts xxiii. 8). But before their 
time the view prevailed that though the soul might subsist 
after death, it did not in any real and effective sense 
exist. It is clear that such a view of the future life held 
within its feeble grasp no motive-power over conduct in 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 119 

the present life. All moral incentives were social in char- 
acter ; the individual simply existed for the sake of the 
nation, and only in the prosperity of the community 
could he find any reward for personal good conduct. 
This line of thought might be effective for the purposes 
of patriotism; it had no function to perform on behalf 
of personal religion in the higher sense. 



II 

With the rise of prophetism, however, a brighter day 
dawned for personal religion in Israel. Not, indeed, at 
first, for the earlier prophets, still obsessed with undying 
hope for the future of the nation as such, were mainly 
concerned with social problems, and viewed personal 
conduct only in its effect on national well-being, and 
with the place of the nation in the purpose of God, but 
having no particular concern in the fate of the indivi- 
dual as an individual. The man who pleased Jahweh 
was the man who honoured Him, and who was just, 
temperate, law-abiding and benevolent in his social 
relations ; and he was to find his sole reward in sharing 
the earthly prosperity and political progress of the 
nation. The time came, however, when this purely 
communal and positivist view of the ethical life was 
broken to pieces on the rock of national misfortune and 
captivity. From this time onward the central interest 
of religion began to shift from the corporate to the 
individual life. It was not that the national interest lost 
its hold, though it was gradually transformed, as we 
shall presently see; rather, within this larger concept 
grew an ever-deepening sense of the religious value of 



120 Faith and Immortality 

the personal life. One of the most crucial results of this 
change was a gradually increasing solicitude as to the 
fate of the individual in the after-life. Let us briefly 
consider the stages of this revolutionary movement in 
Hebrew religion. 

i. We notice that with the captivities of Israel and 
Judah there was a great enrichment and purifica- 
tion of the conception of God. It was one of the 
greatest triumphs of faith during that critical period 
that the downfall and scattering of the nation, instead 
of destroying their belief in Jahweh as their national 
duty, transformed it into something finer, purer, more 
spiritual. The exclusive aspect of His relation to His 
people gradually gave place of a sense of His relation, 
through His people, to mankind at large. His tribal 
function developed into a universal sovereignty, and 
Israel became His instrument for carrying His know- 
ledge and power over the whole world. The character 
of Jahweh even as a tribal deity was differentiated from 
that of all other deities as holy, righteous, gracious and 
profoundly ethical (He was the covenant-keeping God 
from the first); but in the glory of the prophetic con- 
ception of Him, all other deities gradually faded into 
nothingness, and He was left in solitary pre-eminence, 
the supreme Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of all things, 
Whose holy will was the universal law, and in Whose 
favour alone was life. From this point of view we may 
say that the downfall of Judah, though nationally a 
great calamity, was "in a religious sense the greatest 
step towards Christianity since the Exodus. It made 
religion independent of any locality ; it showed that the 
people of God could exist, though no longer in the form 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 121 

of a state or nation." 1 And it opened the way to the 
conception of a Kingdom of God based on spiritual 
instead of political values. The greatest Hope the 
world has ever had was thus born out of the greatest 
disappointment of the people of God. Out of their 
national despair arose the first ray of that spiritual 
dawn which in Jesus was to broaden into the perfect 
day. 

2. Even with the prophets and psalmists, however 
(if we except a few disputed passages), the future to 
which they looked forward with such intense anticipa- 
tion in the light of the loftier conception of God was 
still bounded by the horizons of time. The eschatology 
of the prophets was still a national conception. It was 
drawn from their reflection of God's character as re- 
vealed in their own past; a projection, as it were, into 
coming centuries of their philosophy of history. Since 
God was the real maker of history, "so soon as the 
ethical being of Jehovah was conceived and His oneness 
as God, these could not but immediately follow the idea 
also that human history, which was not so much under 
His providence as His direct operation, would even- 
tuate in a kingdom of righteousness which would em- 
brace all mankind." 2 The individual would share in 
this as a member of the community, but in no other way ; 
and only those individuals who would be alive in the 
great Day of Consummation could personally enter into 
its felicity. All others would only share in it in the sense 
that their work in its behalf would have come to its 
fruition, and that their memory would be honoured. 

1 Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 408. 

2 Ibid., p. 401. 



122 Faith and Immortality 

The religion of the earlier prophets was thus positivist 
in character. The individual was taught to merge him- 
self entirely in the thought of the community, and to 
comfort himself when the sense of his own evanescence 
oppressed him with the reflection that the nation would 
survive and be perfected. 

3. With the Exile, however, a new factor came into 
consideration which was destined to revolutionise the 
whole subject of eschatology. This was the higher value 
ascribed to the individual. For with the Exile the nation 
as a unity ceased to exist, being broken and scattered 
through many lands. But when state and people had 
disappeared, God still remained, " and religion remained 
and there remained the individuals of the nation; and 
thus all that significance, and those responsibilities 
and hopes, which had belonged to the people before, 
were now felt by the individual to belong to him." 1 It 
is out of this purified and ennobled religious function 
of the individual as the channel through which true 
religion was to be maintained in the world, that the ques- 
tion of his fate in the after-life began to take significance 
and to become a pressing problem for faith. 

4. For directly conscious thought was directed to this 
subject, the great disparity between the value and 
significance of the individual believer and his earthly 
fate could not but strike the mind with increasing force. 
Down to the time when the Book of Proverbs was 
written this feeling does not appear to have risen vividly 
enough to be reflected in Hebrew literature, but during 
and after the Exile it becomes clearly, and at last 
acutely, expressed. Hitherto — as we have seen — a 

1 Davidson, op. cit., p. 408. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 123 

naive doctrine of Providence had taught the equivalence 
of merit and reward in this life. When the Exile 
dashed to the ground all hopes of political ascendency, 
the case was very different. During that disastrous time 
it was the just and faithful Hebrew who suffered most, 
and that because of his very righteousness — i.e., his 
faithfulness to his God. Thus the belief in a retributive 
justice bedded into the very fabric of the world broke 
up, and at this thought the heart of the devout man 
melted within him. His belief in the sovereignty of 
God as the author of all events helped to deepen this 
confusion, for it made Him the accomplice — nay, the 
source — of all the unmerited misfortunes of the righteous 
(Job. ix. 24, xxiii. 16). This it was that constituted 
the most acute problem for faith at this period, and it 
was all the more painful because the current idea of 
survival beyond the grave could at that stage give no 
relief. For, as already seen, death meant not only 
separation from all that made life in the body desir- 
able, but separation from God Himself, since He had no 
jurisdiction over the shadowland of Sheol or the grave. 
Since fellowship with God was the condition of all true 
life here, and gave it its highest worth, this induced an 
added horror of death. Faith here came to an impasse 
from which there appeared to be no escape. 

Ill 

But neither outward misfortune nor the inner con- 
tradictions of experience have ever extinguished 
genuine faith, which often reasserts its sovereign rights 
most impressively when all seems lost. So here. 



124 Faith and Immortality 

The great prophets of the Exile opened up one way 
of escape from the impasse of faith. In the first place 
Jeremiah first formulated the idea of an immediate 
personal relationship between the individual soul and 
God. This he represents as a new covenant of God 
with man, contrasted with the old in that (i) it was 
with the individual instead of the nation; (2) it was 
spiritual and not material; (3) it was redemptive. 
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will 
make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with 
the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that 
I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them 
by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt 
(which my covenant they brake, although I was an hus- 
band unto them, saith the Lord) : but this shall be the 
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel : 
after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in 
their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will 
be their God, and they shall be My people. And they 
shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and 
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they 
shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them, said the Lord, for I will forgive their 
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more " (Jer. 
xxxi. 31-34). Here we find the foundation laid for a 
true individualism, and for an individual retribution. 

Ezekiel carries this position one step further, but fails 
to go all the way. He emphasises the fact that every 
soul belongs to God and is in direct moral relation to 
God (Ezek. xviii. 4) ; and he deduces from this fact that 
(1) a man is responsible to God for his own deeds only 
(verse 3); (2) he is free from the heritage of evil that 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 125 

descends from the past (verse 20); (3) if he repents of 
his own sin he shall be free from its punishment (verse 
21); (4) but if having been a virtuous man he falls from 
grace and becomes a sinner, then his former goodness 
shall not avail him, but he "shall die in his sin" 
(verse 24). This is a profoundly moral doctrine, for it 
makes the outward lot of the sinner a concrete expres- 
sion of his inner character. It is characteristic of the 
prophet that in enunciating this doctrine he is primarily 
concerned not so much with comforting the virtuous 
and warning the wicked as with vindicating the char- 
acter of God as a righteous judge (verses 25-30), and 
in urging this as a motive for repentance and reforma- 
tion of life (verses 31, 32). So far this was a gain, but 
it failed in three directions. In the first place, it dis- 
solved the community into a mass of individual units y 
each of whom pursued independently his own way 
wholly unaffected by the rest, being responsible only 
for his own acts, and working out his salvation or his 
own doom. 1 This doctrine of a strictly individual re- 
tribution is worked out in greater detail in the Book of 
Proverbs, and in many of the Psalms. Here individual- 
ism is carried to excess through denying or ignoring 
the social relationships of mankind. Secondly, it failed 
to correspond with experience. It is not true that the 
individual does not suffer for the sins of his forefathers ; 
and it is not true that in the present life the individual 
is judged in perfect accord with his merits or demerits. 
This latter fact gave rise to the problem dealt with in 
Ecclesiastes and in Job. To both of them the world 
was out of joint. In the former book we have the 

1 Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of the Future 
Life, pp. 63, 64. 



126 Faith and Immortality 

cynic's answer to the problem. There is neither retribu- 
tion nor reward in this life ; the destiny of the wise man 
and the fool is identical; and death is the last word for 
both, beyond which there is nothing, "for there is no 
work nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the 
grave whither thou goest" (ix. 10). The inevitable 
programme for such a life of agnostic individualism is 
to make the best of such chances as offer of earthly 
satisfaction while there is opportunity (ix. 4, 7, 9). 

3. A much higher note is struck in Job, 1 where the 
spiritual turmoil caused in the heart of a good man by 
the inequalities of life is presented in a vivid and noble 
way. But even here the true solution is only twice 
suggested in a momentary manner : once when (in 
chapter xiv. 1-15) Job throws out the idea that, just as 
a tree cut down sprouts again, so it is conceivable that 
man should come to some vivifying experience after 
death and refind himself in God (verses 13, 14); and 
when, in a classic passage (chapter xix. 25-27), his 
faith bursts into a more or less assured foretaste of 
a life beyond the grave — "But I know that my 
Avenger liveth . . . and that without my body shall I 
see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes 
shall behold and not another." These, however, are 
but wistful glimpses of the Better Way, and do not 
represent the writer's settled conviction, otherwise the 
main argument of the book becomes irrelevant. None 
the less Job represents a clear advance, raising the whole 
subject to a higher plane of thought, and showing that 

1 Circa 400 B.C. Ecclesiastes was written about two hun- 
dred years later, but it represents an earlier (destructive) point 
of view, and so has been noticed first. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 127 

the idea of a spiritual immortality was already in the 
air. Here we reach the high-water mark of prophetism 
in the Old Testament. 1 



IV 

We must now return for a moment to the idea of the 
Messianic or Divine Kingdom which represented the 
communal aspect of immortality. Throughout the 
prophetic literature the hope of an eternal Kingdom of 
God on the present earth ever hovered on the horizon 
of vision. This Kingdom was to consist of a regener- 
ated nation in which the Divine Will was to be fulfilled 
perfectly, and which was consequently to be blessed 
with the actual presence of God. It was to be inaugu- 
rated by the " Day of Jahweh," when God would mani- 
fest Himself in victory over His foes. This conception 
the prophets had inherited from earlier times. Hitherto 
there was nothing ethical in this notion. It was but the 
popular conception of a judgment on Israel's earthly 
enemies — their vindication against all those who op- 
posed their superiority in the world. Amos (760 B.C.) 
first introduced an ethical element into this idea, for he 
represents the Day of Jahweh as the occasion when God 
would vindicate His own character, even against 
Israel. In this he is followed still more emphatically 
by Hosea (746-734 B.C.) because of the corruptness of 
the nation. Isaiah (740 B.C.) directs it against Judah 
as well as Israel, and for the same reason, but he opens 

1 Ps. xlix. and lxxiii. (dealt with below, p. 133), together with 
interpolated passages in the prophets, represent a later stage 
of thought, and belong properly to Apocalyptic rather than 
Prophecy. 



128 Faith and Immortality 

up a hope of restoration, though only for Israel. And 
Micah (723-700 B.C.), with still greater particularity, 
singles out Jerusalem for the Divine wrath. In 
Zephaniah (621 B.C.) a further step is made, for he 
conceives the Day of Jahweh as the judgment of the 
whole world, and the survival of a righteous remnant 
of Israel. This is consistent with his thoroughgoing 
Theism, for to him Jahweh is the God of the whole earth, 
and is pre-eminently a God of righteousness. In all 
these pre-exilic prophecies this judgment is collective. 
There is no hint of individual judgment. 

After the Exile, as might be expected, the case is dif- 
ferent. Here the individual Israelite comes into judg- 
ment, according to his character and works. A righteous 
community is to emerge as a consequence of this judg- 
ment. " Thus the eschatology of the individual becomes 
a part of the eschatology of the nation," and emerges 
into greater prominence as time goes on, as a result of 
the individualising of religion itself. Another feature 
of post-exilic views of judgment is that it is not merely 
condemnatory, but allied with promise and blessing. 
A distinction, however, must be drawn here. Two lines 
of development emerge, starting from Jeremiah on the 
one side, and from Ezekiel on the other. The former 
preaches a judgment which is vindictive only for the 
finally impenitent, for all others it is corrective and dis- 
ciplinary ; and its issue is the establishment of an eternal 
Messianic Kingdom, in the blessings of which all nations 
shall share. The latter and his successors look forward 
to a more particularistic view. Judgment is a purging 
of Israel of all evil elements, but it is the destruction, in 
whole or part, of all other nations, who are to be for ever 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 129 

excluded from the Kingdom and its blessings. Here 
we come to the parting of the ways between the lines of 
development which lead to Christianity on the one hand, 
and on the other to the hard exclusive Judaism of later 
centuries. Jeremiah's teaching finds its finest develop- 
ment in the work of the " second * Isaiah (chapters xl.-lv., 
about 545 B.C.), who proclaims the function of the true 
Israel to be a missionary to the whole world, and to be 
a light to all nations (cf. Isa. ii. 2); while Haggai 
(520 B.C.) and Zechariah (520-518 B.C.) follow in the wake 
of Ezekiel. 

In all these prophetic forecasts of the Messianic King- 
dom, however, we have still not come to any synthesis 
between the eschatology, or fate of the righteous 
individual, and that of the nation. The prophets were 
held back from a solution of this problem (1) by their 
materialistic conception of the Kingdom as belonging 
to this world, and (2) by their unethical conception of 
Sheoly the place into which all men, good and bad, 
passed at death, which was still believed to be beyond 
the range oi God's government and control. We must 
look beyond prophetism for the solving of this hard 
mystery. We find it in the apocalyptic literature which 
lies outside the canon of the Old Testament, of which, 
however, certain fragments were incorporated into the 
fabric of the prophetic writings at a later date. These 
fragments have only recently been identified and dis- 
entangled. Their discovery has greatly simplified the 
handling of the problem of future destiny as developed 
in pre-Christian times. 



130 Faith and Immortality 



What do we mean by Apocalyptic? 

According to the older view, between Malachi and 
the Christian era there were four hundred " years of 
silence," during which we find no inspired writer, and 
no development of religious thought and experience, on 
the conclusion of which Christianity sprang full-armed 
into being. We owe this crude and unreal notion to 
the action of the Pharisees, who closed the canon of their 
sacred Scriptures prematurely by an arbitrary act which 
had disastrous consequences. From this time on no new 
voice was officially listened to as an authentic guide to 
religious truth : " the Law contained all truth," to which 
nothing could be added, and from which nothing could 
be taken away. This artificial restriction of the free 
movement of God's spirit could not stifle the prophetic 
souls who from time to time felt impelled to deal with 
the many involved problems which in the canonical 
Scriptures were left hanging in the air, and so we find a 
succession of writers who wrote pseudonympusly — i.e. y 
under assumed names which were chosen from among 
the recognised worthies of previous times, in order to 
gain the public ear. 1 Their books were written from 
many standpoints and for different purposes, some- 
times political, but mainly religious, with a view to 
hearten the devout under the stress of persecution or 
discouragement. These " apocalytic " writings cover 
some centuries of time, and form a most interesting 
chapter in the development of religion, being of supreme 

1 See Charles, Between the Testaments (Home University 
Library), pp. 37 et seq. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 131 

importance as a preparation for the rise of Christianity, 
as well as of later Judaism. 1 

The Hebrew prophets, as we have just seen, left the 
eschatology of the nation and that of the individual in a 
state of disharmony. Prophetism having no doctrine of 
future existence, except in Sheol, away from the power 
and grace of God, was in no position to do this. It 
could promise a blessed future for the nation, but could 
give no hope for the individual unless he happened to 
be alive at the Great Day which was to inaugurate the 
golden age. 

It was the function of Apocalyptic to take up this 
and other unsolved problems of faith, and view them 
in the glow of the transfigured doctrine of God which 
gained ever-increasing hold on the spiritual conscious- 
ness of pious Israelites. The misfortunes of the nation, 
and the ever-receding fulfilment of its hopes for political 
rehabilitation, threw them back on God, in the feeling of 
whose fellowship they found peace and strength. 
Viewed from this centre of spiritual experience, every 
subject was illumined with a new light, and faith passed 
into a higher phase. Four distinctive doctrines which 
in Christianity came to their full development are trace- 
able directly to apocalyptic — that of personal immor- 

1 Charles considers the years between 180 b.c and the birth 
of Jesus, the two most interesting fruitful centuries in the his- 
tory of Israel. No New Testament scholar can understand the 
New Testament as " the culmination of the past " [apart from 
the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament] " nor 
can the Jew explain how Talmudic Judaism came to possess its 
higher conceptions of the future life, unless he studies this 
literature as the sequel of the Old Testament.' ' (Between the 
Testaments, p. 45.) 



132 Faith and Immortality 

tality in communion with God, the expectation of a 
new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness, the idea that this was to be inaugurated not by a 
gradual evolution, but by a catastrophic personal act 
of God, and that larger view of history which penetrates 
to the spiritual principles at work, and which gives it 
its moral and spiritual value for edification, confidence 
in God, and hope of infinite betterment for mankind at 
large. We are here concerned only with the first of 
these doctrines. 

Though the apocalyptic literature did not rise till 
prophetism, in the technical sense, had almost passed 
away, it was its direct descendant, and its roots lie 
deep in the Old Testament. One of the impelling 
causes of the movement was the non-fulfilment of early 
prophecies of doom on the nation for its sins. Thus 
Ezekiel (xxxviii. 6, 16, 17) re-edits the unfulfilled pro- 
phecy of Jeremiah (iii.-vi.) of a great invasion from the 
north, and adjourns its fulfilment. This process goes on 
right through the apocalyptic centuries, especially in 
regard to the long-deferred Messianic Kingdom, and 
can be seen at work even in New Testament times (e.g., 
in some passages of St. Paul's writings and in 2 Peter). 
Duhm thus calls Ezekiel the spiritual founder of apoca- 
lyptic. The section of the Old Testament which illus- 
trates this principle most vividly is the Book of Daniel 
(circa 160 B.C. by an entirely apocalyptic writer), whose 
place in the canon was only secured because, though 
really pseudonymous, it was believed to have come from 
the ancient prophet of that name. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 133 

VI 

We find the problem of personal immortality dealt 
with ad hoc in two apocalyptic psalms in the Old Testa- 
ment, with a view to a solution of the dissonance between 
the spiritual experience and outward lot of the writers 
(Ps. xlix. and lxxiii.). In these the holy and righteous 
Jahweh is represented as concerned in the fate of good 
men, and as extending his jurisdiction over Sheol, the 
abode of the dead, which figures for the first time as a 
place of retribution for the wicked, and from which He is 
able to rescue the righteous man (cf. Ps. xlix., verses 12, 
14, with verses 10, 1 5). The burden of Psalm lxxiii. is the 
perplexity caused by the earthly prosperity of the 
wicked, which makes them glory in a blasphemous pride 
of heart (verses 9-12), while the righteous is often 
plagued unjustly (verses 13, 14) and is tempted to rebel 
against his lot (verse 15). An insight into the "mysteries 
of God," however, steadies the psalmist's heart (verse 17), 
and enables him to realise how superficial is the good 
fortune of the wicked. For soon they will be over- 
whelmed in destruction (verses 17-19), while the good 
man is taken up into fellowship with God, which is 
unbroken even by death (verses 23, 24, 26). This is the 
high-water mark of faith in a future life in the Old 
Testament. Henceforth the sovereignty of God is 
recognised over the dead as well as the living; the idea 
of Sheol is fully ethicised ; and the future life is recog- 
nised as the theatre where the moral issues of this life 
proceed to full development. Theism has at last come 
to its own. From this time on there is no looking back. 

The next phase was the co-ordination of the fate of 



134 Faith and Immortality 

the nation and that of the individual. It was not till 
the third or (according to Charles) the beginning of the 
second century B.C. that these two ideas, which had 
hitherto pursued a separate course, were seen to be com- 
plementary doctrines. Hence arose the notion of a 
resurrection of the righteous, which in the first form was 
to take place in order that they might enjoy the bless- 
ings of the Kingdom, so that the righteous nation and 
the righteous man should be blessed together in the 
coming Messianic reign. " The common lesson of such 
a development was that the individual was not to be 
blessed apart from his brethren . . . his highest blessed- 
ness, his highest well-being was impossible except 
through the common life." 1 At first this idea of resur- 
rection was held to involve a return to earth in a glori- 
fied state for the enjoyment of mundane prosperity. 2 
Till then there was no fellowship between the righteous 
dead and their fellows, nor even with God Himself. But 
later this was felt to be unreal, and the heathen doctrine 
of Sheol, where God had no dealings with the dead, was 
replaced by that of Paradise, and heaven, as the abode 
of the righteous after death, so that here was no longer 
any interruption in the communion of the faithful with 
God. This resurrection is the prerogative of the faith- 
ful, and results only from the fact that they are already 
in spiritual fellowship with God, so that the resurrec- 

1 Charles, Between the Testaments, p. 52. 

2 Isaiah xxvi. 19. It is now held that chapters xxiv.-xxvii. 
of Isaiah probably contain a pseudonymous work incorporated 
into Isaiah at a late date. According to Duhm it was written in 
the third century B.C., or even in the second. See Charles, A 
Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 126-8, 
and Between the Testaments, p. 113. 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 135 

tion-life is but the continuance in the after-state of a 
relation already established in this. " Thus the spiritual 
resurrection can already be experienced on this side of 
the grave — a belief which suggests the Johannine doc- 
trine of Eternal Life as something altogether transcend- 
ing time (see John vi. 54, xvii. 3). In the earlier 
apocalyptic there was no resurrection of the wicked 
(cf. Isa. xxiv.-xxvii.). Their fate was to be for ever in 
Sheol, the idea of which was intensified into a Gehenna 
of fire, in which they remained for ever in torment, with- 
out hope of release (cf. Luke xvi. 24). Later, according 
to some writers, they also were to undergo resurrection, 
but only in order that they might undergo judgment 
for their sins before being banished to the place of 
punishment (cf. Daniel xii. 2). But this idea did not 
mature into a definite doctrine during the centuries that 
followed. Even in the case of St. Paul it is doubtful 
if he believed in the resurrection of the unjust" 1 In any 
case the idea remained inoperative. 

So far, the eschatology of the righteous nation or 
community involved an earthly Kingdom to be estab- 

1 There is at least no such resurrection in i and 2 Thess. 
It is doubtful if his theory of a spiritual body (the result of the 
quickening influence of the Holy Spirit) permits such an idea, 
for how could the wicked possess a "spiritual" body; and 
since they lost their " psychic " body at death, there could be 
nothing for them but to be found " naked " {cf. 2 Cor. v. 2, 3) 
and to remain disembodied spirits. (See Charles, Critical His- 
tory of the Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 394.) If this is true 
of Paul, the statement attributed to him by Luke (Acts 
xxiv. 15) must be a mistake. Apart from that the idea of a 
resurrection for the wicked occurs in the New Testament only 
in John v. 28, 29 (which is out of keeping with the context, and 
is probably an interpolation), and Rev. xx. 12, 13, which is 
found in the Jewish portion of the book. 



.13-6 Faith and Immortality 

lished at the millennium, into which the risen righteous 
would be translated in a glorious body. In view of the 
convulsions that were taking place in history, and the 
corrupt state of morals everywhere, however, the earth 
came to be regarded as unfit for the Divine Kingdom, 
and the hope of the righteous was gradually transfe rred 
from a Kingdom of material splendour to a spiritual 
and heavenly Kingdom in which the righteous were 
to be as the angels, and become the companions of the 
heavenly hosts. This took place about ioo B.C. " It 
was taught by many that the Messianic Kingdom was 
to be merely of temporary duration, and that the goal 
of the risen righteous was to be — not this temporary 
kingdom or millennium — but heaven itself. This con- 
ception, combined with kindred apocalyptic beliefs, 
begat an attitude of detachment from the world/' The 
faithful while in the world were not of it. This temper 
of apocalyptic (but not of prophecy) finds its expres- 
sion in the New Testament in the words, " Here we have 
no continuing city," " We look for a city whose builder 
and maker is God," "For ye have not come unto a 
mount that might be touched, and that burned with 
fire, etc., . . . but ye are come unto Mount Zion, and 
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, etc." 
Summing up this long evolution of Jewish thought 
concerning the Last Things, a few great truths stand 
out as the precious outcome of apocalyptic thought and 
reflection. The three chief notes of the coming King- 
dom of God are — First, this kingdom is to be a kingdom 
within man — and so far a kingdom to be realised on 
earth (in a spiritual community of the faithful). 



The O.T. Argument for Immortality 137 

Secondly, it was to be world-wide and would ignore 
every limitation of language and race. Thirdly, it was 
to find its true consummation in the world to come} 
Out of all the tangle of thought and extravagance of 
imagery in the literature of apocalyptic, these three prin- 
ciples shine forth like stars in a murky sky. It is of 
supreme significance for us that these are the three 
essential features of the eschatology of Jesus and of His 
Apostles, The long travail of thought, rising out of the 
pressures and sorrows of the experience of the people of 
God, has issued in these constructive tenets concerning 
the future life. It is the contribution of spiritual Judaism 
to the New Faith into whose inheritance we have 
entered. How far it is appropriated by that Faith, 
and how far transformed into something still finer, will 
be our task to consider in the following chapters. 

1 Charles, Between the Testaments, p. 71. 



CHAPTER II 
JESUS AND THE FUTURE LIFE 



" Earth breaks up, time drops away, 
In flows heaven, with its new day 
Of endless life, when He who trod, 
Very Man, and very God, 
This earth in weakness, shame and pain, 
Dying the death whose signs remain 
Up yonder on the accursed tree — 
Shall come again, no more to be 
Of captivity the thrall, 
But the One God, all in all, 
King of Kings, and Lord of lords, 
As his servant John received the words, 
1 I died and live for evermore ! * M 

Browning : Easter Day. 



CHAPTER II 

JESUS AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

" God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all 
live unto Him." — Jesus. 

AS has been shown in the previous chapter, the 
religious society into which Jesus was born was 
oppressed by a mass of confused and undigested specu- 
lations regarding future destiny, through which ran cer- 
tain bright threads of noble faith, but which had no 
unifying principle round which men's thoughts could 
gather into something like harmony. Certain heathen 
nations still clung to the notion of the life after death; 
the Deistic strain which had crept into later Judaism 
had interposed a whole hierarchy of angelic and 
demonic intermediaries between living men and the 
living God, and so had obscured the essential moral 
issues; and while a small remnant of pious people still 
clung firmly to the faith that they were in immediate 
communion with God, and believed in His sovereign 
care and love for the souls of those who had died in 
fellowship with Him, even they were weighed down 
with the pressure of manifold superstitions which had 
no relation to the central doctrine of their religion, and 
hindered a full realisation of its comfort and joy. 
When we enter the circle of New Testament thought 

141 



142 Faith and Immortality 

on this subject, we feel like travellers who, having long 
wandered in a dense forest, traversed only by dark and 
uncertain paths, and through whose heavy foliage but 
few glimpses have been seen of the blue heavens above ; 
find themselves suddenly under the open sky, and face 
to face with a clear landscape. There still remain here 
and there dark shadows of fear, precipitous chasms of 
uncertainty, and a weedy tangle of traditional notions 
to impede our free passage, but we are at last walking 
in the light of day, and have only to adjust our vision 
to the outlook, to distinguish between fact and fancy, 
temporary illusion and stable reality. It will be our 
task in this and the next chapter to strike a clear path 
to the essential teaching of the New Testament on the 
problem of the future life. In order to do so we must 
examine as carefully as the limits of space permit, the 
materials provided by the Synoptic, Pauline, and 
Johannine literature on the subject. 



I 

It is needless to elaborate our fundamental position 
in starting, that New Testament thought in all its de- 
velopments finds its creative germ and its controlling 
principle in the person and teaching of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. This is true for all departments of Christian 
thought. In Him we come face to face, in a unique 
and incomparable way, with the living God in His 
saving operation on the human soul. This is not to 
under-estimate the work done for us by the great seers, 
prophets and apocalyptists of preceding ages, all of 
whom added something to the authentic vision of God. 



Jesus and the Future Life 143 

We do not, however, and we cannot, tender to them 
the homage we feel due to Jesus. His place and func- 
tion are different. Scattered rays come to us through 
them of the uncreated light ; in Him it comes to us full- 
orbed. Those point to a God dimly seen, too far 
away; they are on this side of the great dividing line 
between deity and humanity : we have to pass beyond 
their hesitant and partial vision in order to reach the 
Great Father. He is still there, and we are here. But 
in Jesus the chasm between God and man has closed up ; 
in our search for God we have at last arrived ; there is 
no beyond to torment our tired and aching souls; no 
sense of a distance still to be traversed, of a separating 
river yet to be crossed. By His revelation of the Father, 
which is not through Him but in Him, He has " brought 
life and immortality to light by His gospel." If then 
we can but reach the pure and authentic message of 
Jesus on the problem of the future life, we have come 
to the last word that is possible for us on this side of 
the obscuring veil of death. But in order to reach that 
message in its purity, it is true that we have to exercise 
a reverent but reasoned criticism. The "glory of the 
Son " was manifested under the limitations of space and 
time, of human temperament, of historical environment. 
The Incarnation, like all earthly happenings, was con- 
ditioned by its essential function — i.e., in Jesus God was 
manifested in so far as, and in no further than, was pos- 
sible in a complete and holy human life, and for the 
particular end of revealing the Father in His saving 
power. This does not in any way invalidate or qualify 
the sufficiency of that revelation. For all that concerns 
the ends of human salvation He perfectly fulfilled His 



1 44 Faith and Immortality 

function; His teaching, though couched in the terms of 
His own generation, was for all time and peoples; His 
work as Redeemer was complete and sufficient for every 
human need; in His person He was the effulgence of 
the Father's glory, and the very image of His substance. 
But we may hold this faith in all its essential purity, 
and yet feel bound to handle the historical problems 
clustering round the Incarnation with a devout freedom. 
Those who know Him by faith, and who have entered 
into the " power of His resurrection," need have no fear 
that a sincere handling of the literary materials at our 
disposal will rob us of any of our spiritual heritage in 
Him, or endanger our experience of His love and grace. 
That being secure, we need feel no anxious care about 
lesser things ; for " He that hath the Son hath the 
Father" also. Less than this we cannot ask for, more 
than this we cannot have. " This is life eternal — to know 
God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." 



II 

In this spirit let us examine the " eschatological " 
outlook attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. 
We begin with a few general characteristics. 

I. The teaching of Jesus concerning the future life is 
nowhere elaborated into a carefully stated doctrine. 
His main interest was the salvation of individuals and 
the founding of a redeemed society in this life, with 
more or less incidental reference to its consummation in 
the life to come. The main positions as regards that 
other life are rather of the nature of implicit inference 
than of direct statement. We have therefore to gather 



Jesus and the Future Life 145 

our materials for a considered view as best we may 
from these indirect and fragmentary utterances. 

2. It is clear, however, that behind all the teaching 
of our Lord concerning this present life lies the clear 
and unvarying postulate of a future life for all men, 
which He may, in a sense, be said to have inherited 
from the pious circle in which He was brought up. This 
is clear also from His uncompromising attitude towards 
the Sadducees, who denied the " resurrection " life. Emer- 
son says somewhere that there are scarcely half a dozen 
direct references in the words of Jesus to a life beyond the 
grave. This may be so, but the inference he appeared 
to draw from this fact, that He was lacking in any 
crucial interest in that life, is grotesquely wrong. The 
comparative silence of our Lord on the subject in His 
recorded words was due simply to the fact that im- 
mortality was no matter of uncertainty, much less of 
indifference either to Him or His hearers, but a postu- 
late of faith which no one in that generation doubted 
except those sceptics who once drew so confident an 
affirmation to the contrary from Him in controversy 
(Matt. xxii. 31, 32). We may say that our Lord's whole 
outlook on life presupposes or assumes as unquestion- 
able the fact of a life after death for all mankind. His 
teaching would lose its nerve-centre if that belief were 
shown to be fallacious. 

3. Our Lord's faith in immortality, however, was no 
mere naive inheritance from the past. While His 
teaching on this subject certainly took its colour and 
much of its form from the current ideas and language 
of His own day, and cannot be understood apart from 
those ideas, it stands on an independent foundation. 

10 



146 Faith and Immortality 

It came to Him neither from the Essenes with their 
"strange mixture of severe Pharisaism, rudimentary 
Gnosticism, and foreign mysticism," 1 nor from Rabbinical 
thought, for His teaching was wholly alien to the genius 
of Rabbinism. There was a note of certainty in His 
attitude peculiar to Himself, and derived from no other 
source than the deeps of His own personal insight and 
experience. In so far as it had any outward source it 
had its roots in the revelation of the Old Testament, 
especially as developed along the lines of apocalyptic 
thought, with whose vocabulary His own is deeply 
tinged. But all He had received from the past was but 
the matrix in which His own personal and unique re- 
velation of the Father was quickened. His characteris- 
tic utterances on the subject were clearly derived from 
immediate intuition and a sure knowledge. 

4. We here come to a point ever to be clearly borne 
in mind. The language in which Jesus expressed his 
ideas was not the abstract vocabulary of the schools, 
but the concrete speech of the home, the market-place, 
the street. His mode of expression — so well suited to 
the oral method of teaching which He practised — was 
simple, concrete, pictorial and characterised by a 
pregnant brevity. 8 He did not develop His thought 
systematically, but in a fragmentary and spontaneous 
manner, as need demanded, and occasion offered. His 
discourses, parables, and table-talk must therefore be 
read in the large free way alone suitable to popular 
imaginative speech. His reticence and even silence 
must also be recognised on many points which, with a 

1 Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality , p. 287. 

2 See the writer's The Master and His Method, pp. 52-58. 



fesus and the Future Life 147 

more systematic teacher, we should have expected to 
find fully developed. And the fact that his method 
was conditioned both as to its content and its method 
by the practical religious needs of His audiences, will 
explain much of the allusiveness and elusiveness of His 
teaching. He did not build up his hearers' faith from 
the foundation, but assumed the great central truths 
which he shared in common with them, and gave Him- 
self to the transformation of these truths into the higher 
values of His own revelation. 

5. Finally, let it be freely recognised that the moulds 
into which the contents of the Gospel were run in the 
first instance were of temporary validity and have no 
permanent significance. 

In other words, the terms in which the fresh and 
living message of Jesus concerning the mind and will 
of God for man was expressed came from the current 
vocabulary of apocalyptic Judaism. The key words 
of the popular religion of His time were the Kingdom 
of Gody Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, Resurrection, 
Judgment, the Last Day, the Restoration of All Things, 
the New Heavens and Earth, etc., and these He uses 
freely in His Teaching. A vast amount of learned 
research has been recently expended as to the origin 
and meaning of these terms. How far are we to be- 
lieve that Jesus Himself shared in the popular concep- 
tions thus expressed ? How far did He use them as 
vehicles for the expression of ideas which, when once 
they were fairly launched on their way, would break 
the temporary moulds into which they were run, and 
assert their spiritual independence and sovereignty ? 

These are among the most difficult questions of 



148 Faith and Immortality 

modern interpretation. It is clear that the Evangelists 
felt that the personality of Jesus soared high above all 
power of expression in the categories at their disposal. 
They make no attempt to explain or to account for 
Him. There was a secret in His life that eluded their 
analysis, a hidden factor in His consciousness which 
defied their search. Nor does He ever seem to have 
made any attempt to enlighten them on the meaning 
of this mystery. There are, however, two utterances 
of His recorded in Matthew which give us a sug- 
gestive clue. The first is found in Matthew xi. 27 : 
"All things have been delivered to me of the Father; 
and no one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither 
doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to 
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him" The 
second occurs in Matthew xxiv. 36 : " But of that day 
and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of 
Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only." The 
first of these passages manifestly refers to knowledge 
of the nature and purpose of God towards humanity; 
the second to the time and occasion of the Parousia or 
Second Coming of the Son of Man. As regards the 
former kind of knowledge — i.e., spiritual knowledge — 
Jesus claims final and exclusive authority; He is the 
unique and authentic Revealer of the Father. As re- 
gards the second — i.e., knowledge of future events in 
the world of time and space — He confesses that He 
shares in the ignorance of other men; He knows no 
more than they do, and has to depend for His forecast 
on the same faculties and power of insight as is pos- 
sessed by them. This gives us the key to much in the 
Gospels which is otherwise not only mysterious, but in- 



Jesus and the Future Life 149 

comprehensible, namely the evident fact that in certain 
matters, Jesus spoke with absolute and unquestioning 
authority, whereas in other directions He seems to 
depend on the ordinary sources of information avail- 
able to all men. If we put these facts together, I think 
we shall find light pouring in on the perplexity felt by 
many devout believers in meeting the contention so 
frequently made by modern students of the Gospels, 
that, while as regards the revelation made by Jesus of 
the saving purpose of God towards men He speaks the 
final and commanding word, in certain other matters, 
e.g., those relating to the apocalyptic programme of His 
life, He shared at least to some extent in the views of 
His contemporaries. 1 If Jesus Himself confessed to 
such a distinction between the substance and the form 
of His revelation, we cannot go far wrong in giving 
these words (which are by universal consent genuine 
and authentic) their full and natural meaning, and in 
recognising the human limitations of His function as 
the Incarnate Word. To do so is in no wise to allow the 
position of Professor A. Schweitzer, who, in his book on 
The Quest of the Historical Jesus, not only emphasises 
the fact that Jesus changed His early views as to the 
imminence of the Kingdom which He preached (which 
many writers of the Evangelical school now accept as 
a fact), but that He was slain in a wild attempt to force 
the Divine hand to hurry on the coming of the kingdom 
through His death ! 

If these characteristics of our Lord's method of 
imparting spiritual enlightenment are borne in mind, 
we shall escape many of the pitfalls into which some 

1 See Charles, Critical History of a Future Life, p. 332. 



150 Faith and Immortality 

exegetes have fallen in the past, and understand why 
so much is included which might otherwise seem to us 
superfluous, and so much left out which we would 
gladly have found there. He spoke to His own age 
and people as they were able to bear it, and we must 
be content to reinterpret His recorded words according 
to our knowledge and need, and exercise a reverent 
imagination in unfolding the implicit content of His 
central truths. 

Ill 

The doctrine regulative of our Lord's teaching con- 
cerning the " last things " is found, as in the Old Testa- 
ment, in the revelation of God in His redeeming activity. 
He based His teaching of a future existence not on the 
nature of Man, but on the character of God as the Holy 
Father. Eternal life was the free gift of the Lord of 
all life, in whose favour and fellowship alone is any 
life worth living. To come into such relation with Him 
as to share lovingly in that quickening and ennobling 
fellowship is to be redeemed from death as well as sin. 
His own function was to reveal that Father in such 
wise that by fellowship with Himself, this fellowship 
with the Father was secured. This revelation of the 
Father was made by Jesus, not only through His teach- 
ing concerning Him, but through His own conscious 
relationship to Him, and through His sufferings, death 
and resurrection. We are here at the heart of the 
Gospel ; this is what it means, and this is what it does ; 
and this carries all else with it. When we have once 
experienced this redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ, 
we have reached the end for which we and the Gospel 



Jesus and the Future Life 151 

exist. What remains is secondary, both as to the 
thought-forms in which the Gospel is expressed in the 
New Testament, and the revisions through which these 
thought-forms have since passed down to our own day. 

2. Our Lord's completely moralised doctrine of God 
accounts for His completely moralised doctrine of Man. 
The value of the human soul consisted for Him in its 
capacity for fellowship with the Holy God as Father. 
In posse, if not in esse, he is the child of God, and as 
such of infinite worth. Whether He believed man to 
be essentially immortal we have no means of determin- 
ing ; what is sure is that for Him Eternal Life consisted 
in a spiritual relation of dependence on God, and of 
obedience to His will. His teaching unquestionably 
implies continued existence apart from this; but in the 
vocabulary of Jesus such an existence would not be life 
in any true sense. It was the Father's good pleasure 
to bestow this life on all who would fulfil the condi- 
tions, and the prime conditions were : first, a prayerful 
and loving spiritual receptivity, and then, a patient per- 
sistence in well-doing. Anything that interfered with 
this end was to be put aside with firm resolution. For 
this higher good every lower good must be sur- 
rendered : a man must sell all that he had that he might 
buy this boundless treasure and possess this pearl of 
great price. If his eye offended him, it must be plucked 
out ; if his hand or his foot, he must cut it off and cast 
it from him; for it was better, He said, to enter "life" 
halt, or lame, or with one eye, than having two eyes or 
hands and feet to be " cast into everlasting fire " 

3. It is characteristic of the thought of Jesus con- 
cerning this higher or "eternal" life that it was an 



152 Faith and Immortality 

essentially social and not a merely individual good. 
This is the Christ-idea of the Kingdom of God, which 
was a community of souls joined in a human-divine 
fellowship, in which alone all the functions of a com- 
pletely equipped spiritual life could be fulfilled, and 
God's will be perfectly done. Such a Kingdom He had 
come to found, and for its realisation He freely laid 
down His life. 

Let us dwell for a moment on His idea of the King- 
dom of God. It was a notion, as we have already seen, 
that had been hovering for centuries on the horizon of 
the devout Hebrew mind, first as a political programme, 
then as an apocalyptic vision, lastly, with some of the 
choicer minds, as a great spiritual emancipation. In 
the hands of Jesus its earthly associations were finally 
washed away, and it stood forth as a purely spiritual 
ideal. We venture here to repeat the suggestive sum- 
mary of the Old Testament and apocalyptic programmes 
of the Kingdom given by Professor Charles, which has been 
already referred to in the previous chapter (pp. 136, 137). 
First we have the idea primarily formulated by Jeremiah, 
that the Kingdom was to be within man. God's law was 
to be written on man's heart (Jer. xxxi. 31-33), and man's 
soul was to be the dwelling-place of the Most High (Isa. 
lvii. 15). Secondly, it was to be world-wide \ embracing 
all the nations of the earth. And, thirdly, while in the 
earlier prophets the scene was to be on earth, and later 
in a transformed heaven and earth, to be attained by 
gradual transformation, about the close of the second 
century, owing to the "growing dualism of the times, 
it was borne in alike on saint and sage that this present 
world could never be the scene of the Eternal Kingdom, 



Jesus and the Future Life 153 

and that such a Kingdom demanded, not merely a new 
heaven and a new earth akin in character to the old, but 
a new and spiritual heaven and earth into which flesh 
and blood could not find an entrance. Thus the Mes- 
sianic Kingdom can attain its consummation only in 
the world to come, into which the righteous should enter 
through the gate of resurrection." 1 This last concep- 
tion of the Kingdom was to be attained not by a 
gradual transformation, but by a personal catastrophic 
act on the part of God. 

Now, says Professor Charles, these are the three notes 
of Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic which 
characterise the Kingdom as introduced by our Lord. 
First, while the apocalyptic note of a future Kingdom 
to be realised partly in this world, and partly in the 
world to come, appears in the teaching of Christ, to 
which He looked forward with intense expectancy, 
there is also a presentation of the Kingdom as some- 
thing inwardly realised here and now — "the Kingdom 
of God is within you" (Luke xvii. 20, 21). Secondly, 
Christ's Kingdom is to be universal (Matt. xxi. 43, 
viii. 11, 12; cf. xiii. 38), a characteristic which follows 
from the first ; for, if character is to be the sole 
qualification for admission into the Kingdom, then, 
wherever that characteristic is to be found, there the 
Kingdom is already. And, finally, it was to be con- 
summated in the risen life (Matt. xiii. 43) through the 
supreme agency of God Himself. We thus see that the 
Kingdom established by Christ corresponds to and 
carries forward on a higher plane the deepest aspects 
foreshadowed in the prophetic and apocalyptic writers. 
1 Between the Testaments, pp. 68-71. 



154 Faith and Immortality 

This completely ethicises and spiritualises the perma- 
nent elements in the past developments, and " fuses 
them into one organic whole." 1 



IV 

It remains for us to view in brief detail such sugges- 
tions as our sources contain of our Lord's doctrine con- 
cerning the fate of individual souls in the future life. 

The first impression that a careful study of our Lord's 
teaching on this subject produces is the fateful signifi- 
cance of this present life in its relation to the future 
state. Our earthly life is par excellence the sphere of 
moral opportunity, where character is developed in a 
series of ethical choices, of which the supreme case is 
our attitude to the offer of salvation made in the Gospel 
of the grace of God. We carry with us the issues of 
that choice, for weal or woe, into the world to come. 
The fate of those who have come to a full knowledge of 
this Gospel is judged by their reception or rejection of 
it (Mark x. 15 ; cf. Matt, xviii. 34). The darkest cloud, 2 
in any case, hangs over the future lot of those who 
knowingly reject it. 3 There is a Kingdom of light and 

1 Between the Testaments, pp. 72-73. 

2 If we may take the parable of Lazarus and Dives as a 
pictorial statement of our Lord's views, we must conclude that 
there is nothing in the conditions governing the life to come to 
suggest that those who have had a full opportunity of surren- 
dering to the Gospel in this life, and who deliberately reject it, 
will be likely to reverse their decision in the life to come. 

3 The reverberating sound of the waves of destiny on the far 
shores of life and death, and the song of deliverance of the 
redeemed, the echo of ultimate anguish and loss, mingle with 
all our Lord's references to this solemn subject. 



Jesus and the Future Life 155 

love and blessedness awaiting those hereafter who join 
the kingdom of redeemed souls in the life that now is. 
This seems to us to be the essence of the eschatological 
teaching of our Lord. One of the things that strikes 
one forcibly in His references to the future life is that 
He never refers to it except to press home the supreme 
moral significance of the life that now is y and of the 
issues in eternity that depend on what we are in time. 
This, indeed, is the necessary corollary of our Lord's 
doctrine of the holiness and love of God, of the worth 
and dignity of the human soul, and of the fateful signi- 
ficance of the passing but pregnant opportunities for 
spiritual growth and service in our earthly experience. 
In this doctrine of the Last Things, He brought to its 
logical conclusion the great movement of revelation con- 
cerning God and Man in their spiritual relations which 
began away back in the distant centuries, and which 
came to fruition in Him. In His teaching, the final word 
has been spoken. 

This brief statement, however, is incomplete until 
we examine the imagery drawn from contemporaneous 
Jewish thought in which Jesus clothes His reference to 
the future life. The keywords of this imagery are 
Kingdom of God, Resurrection, Parousia or the Second 
Coming of the Son of Man, Judgment, Paradise, Hades, 
Gehenna. These were all familiar terms in the religious 
vocabulary of His day, and He uses them freely to 
express His ideas. 

Kingdom of God. We have already briefly dealt 
with this word; here it is enough to point out that it 
expresses on the social side what life or Eternal Life 
means for the individual life. Thus to "inherit" life 



156 Faith and Immortality 

(Mark x. 17), or to "enter into life" (Mark ix. 43-45) 
seems to be synonymous with "inherit the Kingdom" 
(Matt. xxv. 34) or to "enter into the Kingdom" 
(Mark ix. 47; Luke xviii. 24). So closely are these 
terms related that the only difference is that in the one 
case salvation is viewed from the personal side, while 
the Kingdom represents the same fact from the side of 
the society of the redeemed, in fellowship with which 
the individual can alone attain to his full inheritance of 
life. An isolated, individualistic salvation is not to be 
found anywhere in the spiritual horizon of Jesus. 

Parousia. The current idea that the Kingdom of 
God would be inaugurated on earth and completed in 
Heaven appears to have been accepted by our Lord. 
Mr. H. W. Garrod in his suggestive (but unequal) book, 
The Religion of all Good Men, differentiates these two 
forms of Parousia as the apocalyptic (or sudden and 
disruptive) and the eschatological or remoter, which 
was to be led up to by a process of gradual spiritual 
evolution. 1 The question how far the former was 
identical in the mind of Jesus with the popular expecta- 
tion of a literal coming of the Son of Man "on the 
clouds of heaven" (a phrase He Himself uses) is vari- 
ously answered; but it is clear that in some sense He 
expected the Kingdom to come "with power" in the 
lifetime of some who heard Him speak. In its physical 
spectacular sense this hope was unquestionably doomed 
to disappointment. It is equally unquestionable that 
this did not in any way sap the motive power of the 

1 This is the conception of the Parousia at which Paul ar- 
rived in the last stage of his eschatological development. (See 
next chapter, pp. 178-18 1.) 



Jesus and the Future Life 157 

Christian faith in those who underwent this disappoint- 
ment In some deeper and more effectual sense Jesus 
did "come again" and in "great power." Many 
exegetes (notably Professors Sanday and Beet) hold 
that His prediction was mystically fulfilled in the com- 
ing of His spirit on the infant Church at Pentecost, the 
beginning of that age-long and unexhausted experience 
of fellowship with Him which has ever since been the 
nerve-centre of power in the Christian community, and 
which involves a disruptive change of centre from the life 
of the flesh (iv vapid) to the life of the spirit (iv Xpiarq)). 
If this interpretation of the words of our Lord is valid, 
it meets many difficulties, and accounts better than any 
other theory for the triumph of faith over disappoint- 
ment in the early ages of Christianity. 

Resurrection. The Kingdom, though inaugurated on 
earth, was not to find its consummation here, but in the 
life to come. This involved a Resurrection, in which 
the good people who had been looking and working for 
the Kingdom, but who had died before its arrival, 
would be raised from the dead, and pass in the fulness 
of a glorified life into a state of blessedness beyond. 
The resurrection life was not to be a mere repetition of 
this. The relation of sex was to be abolished (Mark 
xii. 24, 25 and parallels), and the redeemed were to be 
"as the angels in heaven" (though what exactly that 
may mean is not clear). The phrases "eating and 
drinking," as applied to that life, must of course be 
interpreted in a figurative sense, implying a society in 
which the fellowship above should be joyfully social 
and full of mutual spiritual satisfaction. Jesus Him- 
self, as in the earthly society, was to be the central 



158 Faith and Immortality 

figure, "that where I am ye may be also" — i.e., in re- 
newed and loving fellowship, which was, according to 
John, the crowning thought in the happy prospect 
before His people. This Resurrection Life was the 
reward of the holy and obedient life on earth, and was 
in a sense an " attainment " (the righteous are those 
"accounted to be worthy to attain that world and the 
resurrection of the dead," Luke xx. 35). Does this 
mean that in the view of our Lord there is no "resur- 
rection " for the wicked ? This seems to be the logical 
issue in the general scheme of thought, at least accord- 
ing to the first two Evangelists, though in the above 
passage in Luke room is left to infer the contrary, and 
(unless we agree that certain passages are an interpo- 
lation) in the Johannine Gospel. 

Judgment. There is a continuous and a final judg- 
ment taught by Christ according to the Synoptists. 
The continuous judgment is that involved in our Lord's 
power to pronounce His verdict on the conduct of un- 
believing cities (Matt. xi. 21-24, xxiii. 37, 38; Luke 
xiii. 34, xix. 41-44) and on those who reject and deny 
Him before men (Matt. x. 32, 33). But the final judg- 
ment is to be one of the features of the Parousia (Matt, 
xxv. 32; Luke vi. 23, x. 12, xxi. 34) when every man 
shall receive according to his deeds (Matt. xvi. 27), and 
shall be judged according to the reception he has given 
to the Son of Man or His representatives when on earth. 
The Parable of Judgment in Matthew xxv. is an imagin- 
ative picture of the principles according to which all 
men, whether they have come to a knowledge of Him in 
this life or not, shall be judged at the Last Day 

Three words familiar enough in that generation, but 



Jesus and the Future Life 159 

obscure to us, remain briefly to be considered — Para- 
dise, Hades (or hell), and Gehenna. 

Hades (translated in the Authorised Version by 
"heir') is the New Testament word corresponding to 
Sheol in the Old Testament. It does not refer to the 
place where the wicked are finally punished, as in our 
own traditional circle of ideas, but an intermediate 
state where the righteous and the wicked are to abide 
till the final judgment. 1 This at least seems to have been 
the general Jewish idea. Paradise, the term used by 
Him in His words to the dying thief, is part of the same 
system of words, but whether He thought of it as a 
heavenly place of rest and peace, or as the better side 
of Sheol or Hades, it is impossible to determine. 
Gehenna, however, it is clear, represents the place of 
final punishment for the wicked, being the " word in the 
Jewish Apocalypses applied to the place of punishment 
at the Great Day of Wrath." It was a state of torment 
for wicked angels and men (used first in this sense in 
the Book of Enoch), and which was their last and 
irrevocable place of destiny. 

1 This, however, is denied by Salmond (Christian Doctrine 
of Immortality, p. 350), who says that the two terms, Hades 
and Paradise, as used (once each only) in the Synoptic teach- 
ing* give us no right to infer that Jesus taught the doctrine 
of an Intermediate State. " His teaching rather overleaps 
the period of man's story which intervenes between death and 
the risen life." 



160 Faith and immortality 



V 

Such was the framework into which fell the few but 
solemn references in the teaching of Jesus regarding 
future life and destiny. How far is this framework 
authoritative for us to-day ? It belongs to a circle of 
ideas entirely alien from our own modern world- 
view. We cannot without a supreme effort think 
ourselves back into them; they are indeed a part of a 
cosmology which the human mind has utterly out- 
grown. When we examine into the history of the 
terms used, we find that some are derived from 
heathen sources far back in the primitive history of 
the race, or from contact with the peoples among whom 
the deported Hebrews sojourned in Babylon. Further, 
they are terms whose significance was in a state of con- 
tinual flux and uncertainty ; scarcely any two Apocalyp- 
tists understand them in the same sense, and in not a 
few cases the same writer uses them in more than one 
meaning. 

It seems therefore to be our duty to make a sharp dis- 
tinction between the form of our Lord's teaching con- 
cerning the future life and its spiritual significance. His 
own oral method of teaching, by tropes and similes and 
popular parables, forced Him to make use of the 
religious terms current in His day, and so clothe His 
Gospel message in words that should be " understanded 
of the people." Only so could He reach their hearts 
and instruct their minds. If He lived in our own day, 
He would speak to us in the same pictorial way : but He 



Jesus and the Future Life 161 

would use terms derived from the vocabulary of the 
Stock Exchange, of modern industry, of the halls of 
science, of the philosophy of evolution, possibly of the 
Psychical Research Society ; for only so could His words 
come home to us with convincing power. And in both 
cases the intellectual moulds would be liable to revision 
and supersession, as men's minds continued to move 
intellectually to another plane and new language was 
coined to correspond with fresh " working ideas." The 
essential truths would be expressed sufficiently for prac- 
tical purposes in either form, but must not be identified 
with it. In the eschatology of Jesus therefore, what is 
authoritative is not the Messianic programme outlined 
therein, but the moral and spiritual verities dimly and 
imperfectly suggested by His words and figures; and 
these have to be disentangled from their temporary 
expression by careful study and faithful spiritual 
insight. In this way we are saved once more from the 
bondage of the letter, and escape into the freedom of 
the spirit. 

The truth of this position may be further noted if we 
follow the fate of these terms in the later literature of 
the New Testament. The Epistles of Paul show that 
the eschatological framework of the Gospels was even 
in his day passing through a sea-change, and when we 
examine the latest Pauline Epistles we find that it 
has already passed through a complete transformation, 
without, indeed, losing its inner and abiding signifi- 
cance. This suggests that we are most faithful to Him, 
not when we enslave ourselves to the form of His teach- 
ing, but when we allow it to take possession of our 



1 62 Faith and Immortality 

minds by its inner power, to be reclothed in the forms 
of our own thought, philosophical, scientific, and 
religious. 

Let us address ourselves, then, to the later literature 
of the New Testament, and watch the process of trans- 
formation at work, especially in the vivid and revealing 
letters of St. Paul. 



CHAPTER III 
THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND THE FUTURE LIFE 



" My Father's House on high, 

Home of my soul how near, 
At times to faith's far-seeing eye 

Thy golden gates appear : 
Ah ! then my spirit faints 

To reach the land I love, 
The bright inheritance of saints, 

Jerusalem above. 

" I hear at morn and even, 

At noon and midnight hour, 
The choral harmonies of heaven 

Earth's babel tongues o'erpower. 
Then, then I feel that He, 

Remembered or forgot, 
The Lord is never far from me, 
Though I perceive Him not." 

J. Montgomery. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

" O Paradise! O Paradise! The world is growing old; 
Who would not be at rest and free where love is never cold? 
Where loyal hearts and true, stand ever in the light, 
All rapture thro' and thro' in God's most holy sight." 

Faber. 

I 

IN the Synoptics we have a presentation of the teach- 
ing of Jesus concerning future destiny to His con- 
temporaries; in the Epistles of St. Paul and of other 
New Testament writers we find ourselves in a world 
where this teaching is seen at work in its transforming 
and inspiring power. 

Between the two periods, however, an event took place 
so revolutionary and creative in character that it 
changed the whole tone and perspective of thought. 
That event was the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 
Whatever be our view to-day of the nature of that event 
— whether that it involved the resuscitation of the earthly 
body of Jesus, and its transmutation into a " spiritual 
body," or that the event was a purely spiritual objective 
reappearance, or even that it was a series of subjective 
visions — there can be no manner of doubt of its effect 
on the mind of the Primitive Church. In every sense 
this great mystery was the creative germ of historical 
Christianity. It threw a backward and illuminating 

165 



1 66 Faith and Immortality 

light on the whole teaching and work of Jesus ; it glori- 
fied His cross of shame, and turned it into the symbol 
of a Divine and sacrificial love ; it instantly invested the 
person of Jesus with Divine significance; and it com- 
pletely altered the vision of the future for devout 
believers, whether in this life or in the life to come. 
Henceforth it was not the Jesus of history only who 
filled the adoring heart of the community of the saved, 
but also the Jesus of the resurrection life, who from the 
Unseen communed through His spirit with His people — 
comforting them in their sorrow, reinforcing them with 
His grace, filling them with a sense of Divine forgive- 
ness and of conquest over sin and circumstance ; inspir- 
ing them with an undying confidence for humanity in 
this world, and with a sure hope, for all who loved and 
served Him here, that they would enjoy a glorious 
immortality in the next. 

It is difficult for us who inherit the apostolic hope as 
a legacy from so many generations of faith to enter into 
the changed feelings of the Apostolic Church in its out- 
look on the future life. Until then that life, however 
they might clothe it in the iridescent hues of an extrava- 
gant apocalyptic, was in the last resort but a pale and 
ineffectual vision, having no clearly marked outlines, 
and no authoritative spiritual content. Their ideas con- 
cerning it were the fruit of an eager speculative interest 
working under the stress of a great religious need. 
There was, however, no objective fact or set of facts in 
their possession to serve as a standard or test of the 
validity of their dream-pictures of the future life, which 
were thus dependent on the moods of faith, and there- 
fore continually changing in form and colour. With 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 167 

the return of Jesus from the dead during the interval 
between the Crucifixion and the Pentecostal feast, this 
element of uncertainty gave way to a glorious confi- 
dence. Henceforth His radiant figure filled the horizon 
of the other life with its familiar and transforming pre- 
sence. Heaven was where Jesus was, and where He 
reigned in gracious sovereignty. To live here was to 
possess His spirit, to enjoy His grace, and to serve His 
cause with gladness of heart; to die was "to be with 
Him " in a renewed personal fellowship, and so in 
sovereign blessedness for ever. It was surely to this 
experience of Jesus in His resurrection life that the 
writer of the Second Epistle to Timothy (who, whether 
Paul or not, here represents the Pauline attitude) refers 
when he speaks of the " holy calling " of God, given us 
" before the world began, but now made manifest by the 
appearing of Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, 
and hath brought life and immortality to light through 
the Gospel" (i. 10). Such was the revolutionary change 
wrought by the Resurrection of Jesus on the minds and 
hearts of the earliest Christian believers. 

This, then, was the essence of the primitive Gospel 
which started Christianity on its victorious career down 
the ages. And this, we may add, has been its essence 
ever since. Many extraneous elements of belief have 
mingled with it from time to time, some surviving from 
the legacy of Jewish thought (not quite sloughed off 
even yet), others drawn from Gnostic and other ethnic 
sources as various cults and creeds came into contact 
and clash with it in the course of ages ; but none of these 
are " of faith " for them or for us, and they are destined 
in the end to disappear, or at least to take a subordinate 



1 68 Faith and Immortality 

and non-essential place, in the ultimate creed of 
Christendom. Every believer has a right to unfold the 
inner contents of his faith in Jesus as he thinks fit so 
long as he is faithful to the simplicity of the creed ; some 
may indulge in elaborate speculative fancies concerning 
the future world and derive what comfort and inspira- 
tion they can from them ; some will be content to leave 
its details in happy trust, feeling sure of little save the 
great foundation fact on which all else is built. Be this 
as it may, what gives its distinctive interest to the other 
world to Christian believers is this — that He who 
revealed the Father as holy love, and who died and rose 
again for human salvation, is in sovereign power there, 
as once He was here in humiliation and lowliness; that 
He is "preparing a place" for His people; and that He 
will receive them at last into glory. 1 



II 

Every creative germ of faith, however, must clothe 
itself in form; and this form it finds in the circle of 
beliefs amid which it is born. As we have seen, the 
Resurrection faith in Jesus fell into a rich matrix of 

1 In a recent newspaper symposium on Immortality, Miss 
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler puts this faith in its simplicity in 
the following words : " My belief as to the future state is 
summed up in the last verse of Richard Baxter's perfect hymn : 

"'My knowledge of that life is small, 
The eye of faith is dim : 
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, 
And I shall be with Him.' 

This is all I have to go upon; and it is enough." (What 
Happens After Death? p. 52.) 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 1 69 

Apocalyptic speculations and visions. The result, as in 
Old Testament times, was that an elaborate system of 
beliefs rose in the early Church clustering round this 
living faith, deriving their vitality entirely from it, but 
threatening at times to obscure and even to smother it 
under an accumulation of secondary tenets. Hence arose 
a struggle between " faith and form," which we can see 
vividly in process in the apostolic literature of the New 
Testament, and to the examination of which it is our 
duty now to address ourselves. 

The teaching of our Lord, as we have seen, was 
expressed in terms of the Apocalyptic beliefs of His 
day, which to some extent He appears to have shared 
during His earthly life. This involved a prospect of 
His more or less speedy return to found the Messianic 
Kingdom. In the first generation the popular Apoca- 
lyptic programme seems to have been taken over bodily 
by the infant Church and linked with an expectation of 
the imminent Second Coming of Jesus " on the clouds 
of Heaven." Its members, in other words, were one 
and all keen Second Adventists, and were day by day 
on the qui vive for the Great Event which filled the 
immediate future with such resplendent light. This 
mood of expectancy resulted in many extravagances of 
thought and speech, and induced a pronounced other- 
worldliness of temper. This reflects itself clearly in the 
literature of the time, and accounts for some of the 
peculiar features of early Christian ethic. The Adven- 
tist Hope, however, was doomed to perpetual disap- 
pointment, like the Hope of Israel for an earthly King- 
dom, but, also like that Hope, it fulfilled a great 
Providential function, heartening the infant Church 



170 Faith and Immortality 

amid its many persecutions and tribulations, diverting 
its attention from its hostile environment and its 
insignificant numbers, and fixing its outlook on the 
heavenly life as the central motive to godly living and 
brotherly love. As time went on, the first crude 
Apocalyptic programme gradually waned. Many pro- 
fessing Christians lost heart and faith, and slipped back 
into carelessness and worldliness of life. But the com- 
pany of true believers were dependent on deeper sources 
of religious vitality, and while they never renounced 
their Messianic faith, it was gradually transformed into 
a more spiritual Hope, till in the latest writings the 
Apocalyptic elements almost disappear. Let us see the 
stages of this process as unfolded to us in the Epistles 
of Paul and John and Peter. 

Ill 

We begin with St. Paul. 1. In the first period of his 
literary activity (1 and 2 Thess.) his Apocalyptic faith 
is clear and pronounced, and involves a very definite 
Adventist programme. We need not here trace the 
various strands of traditional and environal influences 
which made up this programme; how far it may be car- 
ried back to the Old Testament, to Paul's Pharisaic 
training, to Apocalyptic literature, and to the Master 
Himself with whose teaching Paul shows himself in 
many passages to be familiar. 1 Our point here is that 
at the outset of the period from which his extant 

1 On this subject see Professor H. A. A. Kennedy, St. 
Paul's Conception of the Last Things (chap, ii., pp. 32-101, 
especially pp. 98-101 ; cf. also pp. 166-169). 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 171 

writings date, he held a vivid, concrete, clearly outlined 
programme of what was to take place at the Second Com- 
ing of our Lord, to which he seems at this stage to have 
pinned his faith, and which He was prepared to defend 
as coming to him in some authoritative sense from the 
Lord Jesus Himself. 1 That St. Paul should have con- 
fessed himself so confidently on this subject, and should 
afterwards have gradually lost it without losing a par- 
ticle of his distinctive Christian faith — which indeed 
grew continually brighter and more spiritual as the dis- 
appointing Apocalyptic visions faded into the distance — 
throws light on many things, and is of special value for 
us in trying to distinguish between what is, and what is 
not, of faith in our own outlook on the future life. 

A careful analysis of the Pauline Apocalyptic in 
I and 2 Thessalonians will reveal three central concep- 
tions — that of Anti-Christ and the Great Apostasy \ that 
of the Parousia and Judgment , and that of Resurrection 
and Final Destiny. By following out the fate of these 
ideas in his later writings, the progress of his thinking 
will be clearly manifested. 

(a) Anti-Christ. An examination of what is exactly 
meant by this idea is not necessary for our purpose, and 
would lead us too far afield. Enough that at this stage 
Paul expected a personal embodiment of the evil prin- 
ciple to be " revealed " immediately before the Second 
Coming (2 Thess. ii. 8) who would be destroyed in the 

1 Cf. 1 Thess. iv. 15, " For this I say unto you by the word 
of the Lord," etc., after which follows what has been called 
the " Pauline Apocalypse" (verses 15-17). " There is a set- 
ness and rigidity in the teaching of the Apostle which is not 
found in that of Christ " (Charles), which suggests that Paul 
was partly depending on other sources. 



172 Faith and Immortality 

H brightness of that Coming." There was to he a great 
apostasy at the instigation of this arch-deceiver, which 
(according to Sabatier 1 ) would " extend far beyond the 
limits of Judaism, and be the outcome of a general and 
hopeless revolt of the whole world against God and the 
order established by Him." This consummation of evil 
forces was to be the sign that the true Parousia of the 
Lord was imminent (2 Thess. ii. 1-4). 

(J?) The Parousia. This was to take place during the 
lifetime of Paul and his contemporaries (1 Thess. ii. 19; 
iii. 13 ; iv. 15 ; v. 23). That this would be so, is affirmed on 
the authority of Christ Himself (" For we tell you, as the 
Lord told us, that we the living, who survive till the 
Lord comes, are by no means to take precedence of those 
who have fallen asleep " — Moff att's Translation). This 
advent, however, was to be at the last a sudden and 
catastrophic event ; it was to arrive as " a thief in the 
night " (" When ' all's well ' and ' all is safe ' are on the 
lips of men, then all of a sudden Destruction is upon 
them, like pangs on a pregnant woman — escape there 
is none" (ibid.). The programme of the Parousia is 
clearly set forth. The Lord is to " descend from Heaven 
with a shout, and the voice of the Archangel and with 
the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise 
first ; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught 
up together to meet them in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
in the air ; so shall we be ever with the Lord." Then fol- 
lows the Judgment on the quick and the dead, involving 
the destruction of Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8) and sum- 
mary and final vengeance on godless and careless men, 
whose fate is " eternal destruction " (oXeOpo? alcovios) 
1 St. Paul, pp. 1 19-12 1. 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 1 73 

or " perishing" {airdtyKeia) . There is a fierceness, not to 
say vindictiveness, about this picture of judgment which 
shows that Paul's Christian faith has not yet enabled 
him to slough off the Pharisaic temper of his youth, and 
stands in marked contrast with his attitude in the later 
Epistles. 

(c) The Resurrection and Final Destiny of the Faith- 
ful. The idea of resurrection is demanded by the fear 
lest the faithful dead should not share in the blessed- 
ness of the Kingdom. The same regard for those 
righteous who had passed into death was (as we have 
seen, p. 135) the germ of the resurrection hope in the 
Old Testament and Apocalyptic times. Paul quiets 
those who are exercised on this point, by assuring them 
that the holy dead are to take precedence of all others 
at the Coming of the Lord (as a special recognition of 
their faithfulness in spite of disappointment ?), and they 
are to be henceforth " for ever with the Lord " (1 Thess. 
iv. 17) in a heavenly world, the present world being 
probably consigned to destruction, since it seems to 
have no further place in the Apostle's outlook. It is 
to be carefully noted that neither in these earlier nor in 
any of the Apostle's later writings is there any place for 
the resurrection of the wicked, so far as we can find out ; 
their fate was to be " destroyed " (2 Thess. i. 9 ; 1 Thess. 
iv. 6, v. 3). 

Summing up this outline of Paul's earlier views, we 
cannot ignore the materialistic and panoramic setting 
of his thought concerning the Second Coming. This 
betrays its Jewish origin, and it proves that as yet the 
purely spiritual aspect of the Gospel had not per- 
meated his mind through and through. The temper 



174 Faith and Immortality 

also is uncompromising and hard; the spirit of the 
Master's teaching had not as yet taken precedence of the 
form in which it had been transmitted to him. 

2. When we pass on to the next phase (after an 
interval of from two to four years) — that represented in 
the First Epistle to the Corinthians {circa A.D. 55), we 
find that a process of change had already begun. This 
change involved the dropping of certain elements in 
the earlier picture and the development of the Apostle's 
thought in other directions. 

What disappears is all reference to the Antichrist of 
the Great Apostasy, which never comes forward again. 
What is developed is a more spiritual ethical tone 
(which, however, is marked enough in the Epistles to the 
Thessalonians), and a more detailed treatment of the 
Resurrection doctrine, arising out of a dispute in the 
Corinthian Church as to the nature of the Resurrection 
body. He still looks forward to the Parousia in his 
own life-time (1 Cor. iv. 5, xi. 26, xv. 51-52, xvi. 22), 
and he is consequently disposed to persuade his readers 
from marriage and all earthly entanglements (vii. 26, 
29). This Parousia is closely related to the Final Judg- 
ment (iv. 5), and there is to be no millennial period 
between these two events. There is to be no resurrec- 
tion except " in Christ." His resurrection and that of 
believers are more ethically and organically related 
(vi. 14, xv. 22). Professor Charles here finds Paul's 
theory of the date of the resurrection passing through a 
critical phase. According to his statement in 1 Cor. 
xv. 51-52, it is to take place at the Parousia, but accord- 
ing to his theory of the risen body, it should take place 
at death — a situation which suggests that his growing 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 1 75 

thought is increasingly at variance with his Rabbinical 
tradition. In this epistle the Apostle does not seem to 
be conscious of the antinomy, but in the second epistle 
he seems to have realised something of the inconsistency 
of his former view, and has abandoned it in favour of 
the doctrine that the resurrection of the faithful follows 
immediately after death 1 (2 Cor. v. 1-8). As yet, how- 
ever, he holds that resurrection takes place suddenly u at 
the last trump" (xv. 52), after which the living will be 
transfigured (verse 53), and the perfected Kingdom will 
begin in a new and glorious world. This involves the 
overcoming of the last enemy, death, when God will 
become "all in all" (xv. 25-28). All this is pressed 
home on his readers as an incentive to avoid every form 
of sin and uncleanness, and an encouragement to faithful 
and happy service, "forasmuch as ye know that your 
labour is not in vain in the Lord " (verse 58). 

3. The third phase is to be found in 2 Corinthians and 
Romans 2 (circa A.D. 57 or 58). 

1 Charles, Critical History of the Doctrine of the Future Life, 

P 395. 

2 Many writers of distinction decline to believe that the dif- 
ferences in Paul's presentation of his eschatological views 
in 1 and 2 Cor. imply any change in those views, on th& 
ground that the interval between the writing of the letters 
(probably about six months) was not long enough to permit 
such a change to take place. This psychological argument 
does not seem to us to have much force in the case of a per- 
sonality so vivid, spontaneous and quick in his alternations of 
mood and outlook as was St. Paul. Changes that need years of 
slow development in certain lethargic temperaments take place 
in others by leaps of sudden intuition. Some men are pedes- 
trian in their thinking; the imagination of others has wings; 
their processes of thought are sudden and rapid; and this 
seems pre-eminently true of St. Paul. It may be stated that 



176 Faith and Immortality 

Here the vacant place taken by the conception of 
Antichrist and the Great Apostasy as preceding the 
Parousia is taken up by a new and ever-deepening 
sense of the universal spread of the Kingdom of Christ 
on earth, when all the world would be converted to the 
Gospel (Rom. xi. 25-32), which was immediately to. 
precede the coming Advent. This was still conceived 
of as near at hand (2 Cor. i. 14). At this Parousia 
God was to judge all (Rom. xiv. 10), though elsewhere 
Christ is represented as being the judge (2 Cor. v. 10). 
This judgment is according to character as vitalised 
by faith (Rom. ii. 6, xiv. 12 ; cf. Gal. vi. 7, 8; Col. iii. 25). 
The spiritual body is to be given at death, but the 
Apostle is inclined to hope for himself and others that 
they might rather pass by " transformation " into the 
spiritual state without the crisis of death (is not this 
what he means by saying " not that we would be 
unclothed " — i.e., by the dropping of the body at death 
— but rather " clothed upon " by the transmuting of this 
body suddenly into its spiritual equivalent ? — see 
2 Cor. v. 2-4). Resurrection is spoken of as though it 
took place at death, which puts us in possession of the 
spiritual body which " from one standpoint is the result 
of the action of the individual spirit, and from another 
a divine gift" {cf. 1 Cor. xv. 35-49; Gal. vi. 8; and 



the view adopted in the text is held by Reuss, Holtzmann, 
Teichmann, Pfleiderer, Schmiedel, Cone, Clemens, etc., as 
well as Charles. On the other side are Denney (The Death of 
Christ, p. 24), H. A. A. Kennedy (St. Paul's Conception of the 
Last Things, pp. 24 et seq., 163, 262 et seq., 271). For parallel 
movements of thought in Persian and Jewish literature see an 
interesting note in Kennedy's book (p. 263). 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 177 

Rom. vi. 23). Thus in Rom. viii. 19 there is no longer 
any talk of a "resurrection" of the faithful at the 
Parousia, but of their " revelation " (" the earnest long- 
ing of creation waiteth for the revelation of the sons of 
God," which means the manifestation of the glory they 
already possessed; cf. Col. iii. 4). In harmony with 
this higher line of thought the faithful are represented 
as even now in possession of the resurrection life, being 
already "alive from the dead," or as "dead unto sin" 
and "alive unto God" (Rom. vi. 13; cf. Col. ii. 12, iii. 1 ; 
Eph. ii. 6). 

4. When we come to the fourth phase of Pauline 
thought (three or four years later) the gradual slough- 
ing off of the earlier Apocalyptic programme has 
reached its limit; indeed it is no longer possible to 
compare in detail the advance made with the earlier 
stages, as the perspective of thought has altogether 
changed. 

The dominant idea in the Epistles to the Philippians, 
Colossians and Ephesians is the supreme cosmic signifi- 
cance of Christ, who is at once the creative agent (Col. i. 
17), the uniting principle (ibid.), and the final end of 
creation (Col. i. 16) — the starting-point and goal of the 
universe, who sums up all things in Himself as its 
unity. 1 The phraseology of Apocalyptic has now almost 
entirely disappeared, together with its panoramic pro- 
gramme and thaumaturgic changes of vision. The last 
traces of Judaistic Eschatology have melted away and 
disappeared from Paul's view; the Christian thinker 
has absorbed the Rabbinical expert; the expulsive 
power of the new Gospel has banished the fanciful 
1 Charles, op. cit., p. 403. 

12 



178 Faith and Immortality 

extravagancies of the old Apocalyptic. The change is 
so great that many great scholars have gravely doubted 
the Pauline authorship of these later epistles, but there 
seems no valid reason for doing this. For beneath 
these surface ideas the fundamental spiritual outlook of 
the Apostle is the same throughout. The difference lies 
in the fact that it took many years for the essential 
truths of the Christian Gospel to percolate through all 
the avenues of the Apostle's mind ; and only at the last 
do we see the triumph of the new faith over the alien 
forms into which at the outset it had to fit itself. Others 
would suggest that in his later years Paul, forsaking 
Rabbinism, came more and more under the dominance 
of the Alexandrian Philosophy, and naturally changed 
his phraseology to suit his view-point. Be this as it 
may, it is clear enough that the creative principle in his 
mind was an ever-deepening conviction of the all-pene- 
trating significance for him of the Living Christ who 
had been personally incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, 
now exalted to the throne of the Highest, and destined 
ultimately to appear as the Judge of all. Even the 
distinction between God and Christ, which appears in 
the Apostle's earlier doctrine of subordination of the 
Son to the Father (1 Cor. xv. 24-28) has passed out of 
view; Christ is in the end to be "all in all" (cf. Eph. 
i. 23), as God was in the earlier passage. 1 

1 The one fixed and unalterable element in St. Paul's escha- 
tology is his vivid realisation of the Parousia, which is implicit 
even in the later epistles (cf. Phil. i. 6, 10, 23 with ii. 16, 17), 
and while he no longer expected to be alive when it occurred, 
he does imply his belief that some of his readers would live to 
see it (i. 6). It is characteristic of his religious attitude to- 
wards his Lord that this belief should survive in the general 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 1 79 

This transfiguration of the Apostle's thought is 
clearly seen in his final attitude regarding the exten- 
sion of Christ's redemption to the realm of spiritual 
beings. I cannot here do better than quote Professor 
Charles' summary of Paul's ultimate views of future 
destiny. " Since all things in heaven and earth, visible 
and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or prin- 
cipalities, or powers, were created by Christ (Col. i. 16), 
and, according to the same passage, were to find their 
consummation in Him, they must therefore come within 
the sphere of His mediatorial activity; they must 
ultimately be summed up in Him as their Head 
(avaK€(f)a\aL(0(Tacrdat ra tt&vtci iv rto X^cttgS, Eph. i. 10). 
Hence, since in the world of spiritual beings some have 
sinned and apostatised, they too must share in the 
Atonement of the Cross of Christ, and so obtain recon- 
ciliation (Col. i. 19, 20). How successful this ministry 
of reconciliation will be in the spiritual world, the 
Apostle does not inform us, nor yet whether it will 
embrace the whole order of spiritual existences — i.e., 
the angels of Satan. Since, however, all things are to 
be summed up in Christ, there can be no room finally in 
the Universe for a wicked being, whether human or 
angelic. Thus the Pauline eschatology points obviously 
in its ultimate issues either to the final redemption of 



transformation of his ideas. The permanent value for faith 
of such a doctrine is a belief that the ultimate future belongs 
to Christ. But for this confident expectation, would not the 
nerve-centre of our own faith be sooner or later paralysed? 
There is no Parousia in the " eschatological " speculations cf 
such a writer as Mr. H. G. Wells, hence the dismal and vacil- 
lating outlook on the future which characterises his writings. 



180 Faith and Immortality 

all created beings, or — and this seems the true alterna- 
tive — to the destruction of the finally impenitent. But 
this destruction would not be of the nature of an 
external punishment, but subjective and self -executed." 1 
We thus find St. Paul's views of the Last Things 
during the period of his literary activity (covering some 
ten years of his life) passing through a process of con- 
tinual change. In the first phase his Apocalyptic pro- 
grammers formal and rigid, as though he had taken it 
over bodily from other sources, without passing it 
through the fire of his own thought and experience; in 
the second and third, it is in a process of rapid dis- 
integration and transformation, partly through the 
activity of his own thinking, partly through a deepen- 
ing experience of the more spiritual aspects of the essen- 
tial Gospel ; in the last, this process has been practically 
completed and he bases his position no longer on a crude 
Apocalyptic foundation but on a profound realisation of 
the cosmic significance of the Person and power of the 
risen and regnant Christ, with whom he was in constant 
communion, and by whose spirit he had been led into 
the larger and deeper truth of the Gospel. 



IV 

In the Johannine writings, which are much later than 
those of St. Paul, we have in one direction an advance 
on the Pauline doctrine, but in another a retrogression, 
owing, probably, to the fact that the writer was handling 

1 Charles, op. cit., pp. 404, 405. Is this last statement neces- 
sarily true of St. Paul's view? 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 1 8 1 

some synoptic traditions which had come down to him 
through an independent source. 

Thus (illustrating the latter point) we find the reap- 
pearance of Antichrist (in the plural) who were to 
herald the approach of the Parousia (i John ii. 18). 
This, in a word, was the spirit of unbelief (ibid. iv. 3). 
In the Johannine Gospel the Parousia has two mean- 
ings, one present and spiritual or subjective (xiv. 18, 19, 
xii. 26, 27, xiv. 21, 23; the second future or historical 
(xiv. 2, 3, xxi. 22 ; cf. 1 John ii. 28). What of Resurrec- 
tion and Judgment? These, too, according to our 
present text, are twofold. Consistently the Resurrection 
should disappear, as an outward event, except in the 
sense of the consummation of all things, Jesus Himself 
being the principle and power of the resurrection or 
new life. There are, however, certain passages (John 
v. 28, 29) where a future resurrection is spoken of. 
Winstanley and Charles (and many other exegetes) 
treat these as later interpolations in the original text, 
with which they are out of harmony. There is at least 
not only a present judgment going on (John iii. 18, 19), 
but a day when in the final consummation of all things 
the issues of life and death are revealed (1 John 
ii. 28), and a man's relation to God is determined by 
his attitude to God's Son, and when the believer will 
enter on eternal blessedness or life, which is the full 
reward of the faithful (2 John 8). The fate of the 
finally impenitent is left in obscurity, but it is implied 
that in the issue there must be an end of those who 
have sold themselves irrevocably to its sway — if such 
there be. 

When we pass on to the examination of the remain- 



1 82 Faith and Immortality 

ing New Testament writings, we find a strong Apoca- 
lyptic strain in all, though they have no common or 
fixed Apocalyptic programme. We need not here dis- 
cuss the Book of Revelation — which is a complicated 
web of Jewish and Christian eschatological pictures 
very difficult if not impossible to reduce to harmony — 
but will merely remark that it contains some of the 
finest and most comforting of all forecasts of the future 
life for believers, with a dark and terrifying back- 
ground of retributory woe for the impenitent. It was 
partly written and partly compiled in times of fierce per- 
secution and suffering, by a man of powerful and re- 
splendent imagination, who felt bitterly the anguish 
and terror of the time, and whose state of mind is 
reflected in the lurid pictures of Divine vengeance that 
frequently occur. The chaos of imagery with which the 
book abounds has been the happy hunting-ground of 
millennial theorists in all ages — a process still unspent, 
but with which we need not trouble ourselves here, for 
"that way madness lies." 1 The chief spiritual value of 
the work lies in its glorification of martyrdom, and its 
beautiful pictures of heavenly blessedness, for those who 
are "faithful unto death." The "crown of life," the 
"hidden manna" and the "white stone"; the rich scene 
in which the Lamb receives the homage of the four-and- 
twenty elders and of the multitude whom no man can 

1 ' ' The Apocalypse is obscure because it was meant to be 
obscure. The writers put into cryptograms things which it 
was not safe for Christians to discuss openly. No doubt it 
was generally intelligible to those to whom it was addressed, 
but the key has been lost " (W. S. D. McConnell, The Evolu- 
tion of Immortality , p. 125). 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 183 

number, the exquisite sketches of the New Jerusalem 
"descending out of heaven from God," with her streets 
of gold and walls of jasper, and of the New Heavens 
and the New Earth "wherein dwelleth righteousness" 
— have been taken to the heart of the universal Church, 
and stand figuratively for all that is beautiful and 
solacing in our hopes of the Hereafter. They are but 
splendid dreams, but faith accepts them as an attempt 
to put into the vividest language of earth some of those 
supernal realities "which eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, but 
which God hath prepared (in the Hereafter) for those 
that love Him." 

There is one aspect of the Petrine eschatology which 
must not be left out of this brief treatment of the New 
Testament literature. It is that embodied in the two 
passages referring (1) to Christ preaching to the spirits 
in prison (1 Pet. iii. 19), and (2) the "preaching of the 
Gospel to the dead" (ibid. iv. 6). The interpretations 
of these passages have been bewildering in their incon- 
sistency, suggesting that most commentators have been 
profoundly influenced by their own a priori conception 
of future destiny in their handling of the Apostle's 
words. Into these we will not enter, as they are not 
necessary for our purpose. Their significance for us lies 
in the fact that one of the New Testament writers who 
had spent his novitiate as one of the Lord's personal dis- 
ciples had the boldness to suggest his belief that on 
the advent of the last judgment the Gospel will have 
been preached to both the "quick and the dead, so that 
all souls will have had the Great Alternative placed be- 
fore them ere their doom is sealed." This, as Charles 



184 Faith and Immortality 

well puts it, is the last achievement of the " all but final 
state in the moralisation of Hades." Whatever author- 
ity we may be inclined to give to these passages they at 
least prove how thoroughly at least one New Testament 
writer held to the hope that even beyond the grave there 
was a possibility of ethical change, and that in any case 
those who had no chance of having it presented to them 
here would not be left outside the range and appeal of 
the everlasting mercy. 



Let us gather up the results of this brief survey of 
the Eschatology of the Epistles. 

1. As is the case with the Gospel teaching about the 
Last Things, they bear consistent testimony to the fact 
that for all the Apostolic writers the future life is the moral 
and spiritual issue of this life. Everywhere that life is 
viewed in its relation to conduct and character on earth. 
Everywhere, as in the Synoptics, it is made use of as a 
practical motive to moral endeavour, an urgent incen- 
tive to spiritual aspiration. This is its supreme inter- 
est; this is its practical value. All other motives to 
holiness pale in the light of this tremendous considera- 
tion — that whatever passes, character abides, and that 
our fate Yonder is governed by our actions and be- 
haviour Here. These brief years of our earthly experi- 
ence, so changeful in lot, so evanescent in opportunity, 
so speedily to end, contain eternal issues; our souls 
move to a solemn destiny of weal or woe, which does not 
unfold its full meaning till the gateway of death closes 



The Primitive Church and the F?tture Life 185 

the list of our earthly choices. This invests the smallest 
happenings of this life with profound significance, and 
promotes a habit of constant solicitude and watchful- 
ness, lest at last we be found wanting. From this point 
of view the dominant New Testament appeal finds its 
expression in the weighty words of the Second Epistle 
of Peter, " Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, 
what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy con- 
versation and godliness, looking for and hastening the 
coming of the day of God ? Wherefore, beloved, see- 
ing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye 
may be found of Him in peace, without spot and blame- 
less " (2 Pet. iii. 11, 12, 14). Clearly then any view of 
the life Beyond which tends to lessen the spiritual sig- 
nificance of the life that now is, and encourages moral 
slackness or indifference, is out of keeping with the 
teaching of the New Testament from first to last. 

2. The touchstone of character in this, as in any other 
life, is the souVs attitude to the offer of salvation in 
Jesus Christ. 

This is the standard to which all must conform; this 
the test that will be applied to all — what is our final 
attitude to the revelation of saving love in the crucified 
and risen Lord ? To all these writers this standard 
and test are axiomatic. Nor is there anything arbitrary 
in this position. For all men must stand or fall by their 
attitude to the highest they know, and what higher is 
there or can there be than this ? And if so, " how shall 
we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ?" (Heb. ii. 3). 
To be joined to Christ, therefore, to open the heart wide 
to his inflowing grace and power, to bow in penitence 
to the forgiving love revealed in His Cross, to share in 



1 86 Faith and Immortality 

the potency of the risen Life — this is at once the duty 
and privilege of all who would enter on the life eternal. 
On the other hand, to stand obstinately outside the 
Christ life which is thus brought within our reach — this 
is to lose all, and to take one's place " with those outside 
the gate," whose fate is destruction. 

But what of those who have never had this chance 
here? This is a speculative question which, however 
intense its interest for us, does not appear to have been 
fully faced by these writers. In their vivid and prac- 
tical letters, we must remember, they were dealing only 
with those to whom the Gospel had been preached ; and 
they were only concerned with the problems affecting 
these people in their actual lives. It is only by infer- 
ence from isolated passages here and there that one or 
two hints emerge of the way they would have dealt with 
such a question were it plainly put to them. Probably 
indeed they would have given various answers to such 
an inquiry, for they do not all represent the same point 
of view, nor had any of them (not even Paul or John) 
fully worked out all the implications of the Gospel they 
preached. Such suggestions, however, as the later 
writers give us would tend towards a more kindly view 
of this problem than most exegetes have hitherto attri- 
buted to them, and there is certainly no ground for the 
terrible position which seems to have been almost 
universally held until quite recent times, that all who 
died in ignorance of the Gospel were eternally lost. 
Paul's incidental reference (Rom. ii. 12) to those 
"who have sinned without law and who perish without 
law" combined with the more positive assurance attri- 
buted to Peter in Acts x. 35, that "in every nation he 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 187 

that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
of Him," suggests that in their view men everywhere 
are judged by their attitude to such opportunities as 
are granted to them, while the passages already referred 
to, dealing with the preaching of Christ to the dead, 
open a door of hope that these latter will have the 
chance in the Beyond which has been denied to them 
here. This is the only light from the New Testament 
Scriptures that can be thrown on this problem. For the 
rest we are left to deal with it in the light of the central 
principles of the Gospel as revealed to ourselves. 

3. Passing from these ultimate questions of faith to 
the forms which it takes in the Epistles, we come to this 
very important reflection — that the eschatological Hope- 
in New Testament times took more than one form, and 
it is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce these forms to 
any common type or standard. The spiritual content, 
however, is the same throughout — a passionate faith in 
the Parousia and the Resurrection life; but the pro- 
gramme of events preceding and accompanying that 
Parousia is never quite the same in the various writings. 
It is clear also that in the mind of the greatest New 
Testament writer — St. Paul — the eschatological forms 
of belief were constantly changing with his advancing 
experience of fellowship with Christ and of service 
under Him. This is all the more remarkable when we 
remember two facts. In the first place, the earliest form 
of Paul's eschatological belief was believed by him to 
have been derived more or less directly from Jesus Him- 
self, and was therefore presumably invested with the 
authority of the Master. Yet we find that Paul freely 
altered his eschatological views more than once in 



1 88 Faith and Immortality 

favour of a more elastic theory, and that finally the 
Apocalyptic element disappeared altogether out of his 
teaching, giving way to an almost universalist view of 
future destiny. Secondly, he did this without in the 
slightest degree losing his faith in the Risen Lord. On 
the contrary, while the Apocalyptic form of the teach- 
ing of Jesus faded more and more into the distance, 
Paul's whole horizon was filled more and more fully, as 
the disillusioning and enriching influence of experience 
passed over him, with a sense of the presence, power, 
glory and final victory of Jesus in the eternal world. It 
is as though from the Unseen his Master's spirit were 
continually at work in Him, expanding his vision, 
clarifying and spiritualising his conceptions, and lead- 
ing him by insensible degrees from the bondage of the 
letter into the freedom and sovereignty of the spirit. 
This should be a lesson to those to-day who imagine 
that if we venture to suggest that Jesus during His life 
Himself to some extent shared in the Apocalyptic views 
of His contemporaries, His authority as the Revealer of 
the Father must go by the board for ever. For here 
was one who in the very first century did surrender the 
synoptic Apocalyptic which he believed came from 
Jesus without any sense of incongruity, who yet held 
loftier and ever loftier views of the Divine significance 
of His Person, and of the quality and range of His 
cosmic function. What Paul thus did, apparently with- 
out realising the extraordinary nature of the fact, we 
may well do without fear or hesitancy. The Apocalyp- 
tic imagery of Jesus is but the crystal vase into which the 
wine of His spiritual teaching was poured; and that 
teaching can be poured into any other vessel, taking a 



The Primitive Chtirch and the Future Life 1 89 

new form each time without in any way changing its 
own pure and heavenly content. We are therefore justi- 
fied in distinguishing between the Jesus of Apocalyptic, 
and the Jesus who revealed the Father, because He was 
Himself the Son who was in the bosom of the Father. 
The one belonged to Galilee and Judea, the other be- 
longs to the universe, who through His spirit in our 
hearts will lead us into all the truth He had no time 
fully to unfold while on earth. 



VI 

It remains for us to complete this sketch of the his- 
tory of the doctrine of Immortality in Biblical times, 
into the heritage of which Christendom has entered, by 
drawing a few general conclusions that have been sug- 
gested in the course of our study. 

1. Whether we are to trace the primitive belief in a 
future life to the influence of dreams in which the dead 
reappear, or to a deeper intuitive insight into reality, 
it is clear that such a belief was in full possession of the 
field before the distinctively Hebrew religion began its 
course. Faith in Jahweh did not create faith in the life 
to come; on the contrary, the two lines of belief rose 
from different sources and ran along different channels 
for many centuries. They were even in conflict, for the 
conception of the life to come was heathen and non- 
moral, while from its inception Jahwism implicitly con- 
tained the elements of a thoroughly moralised view of 
life here and hereafter. 

2. The conquest by Jahwism of the hitherto heathen 



190 Faith and Immortality 

conception of the future life among the Hebrews was 
accomplished by two factors : (1) The unfolding revela- 
tion of the nature and character of God from the stage 
at which He was little more than a tribal deity, to that 
when He is recognised to be the Creator and Sustainer 
of all things, though specially the God of His Chosen 
People, with whom He was joined in a holy Covenant 
of Love. (2) The bitter lessons of experience through 
which the nation passed during its long history which 
led to a perpetual spiritual correction and expansion of 
its faith. 

3. In Jesus Christ this revelation of God as Holy and 
redeeming Love came to its full and perfect manifesta- 
tion, first in His teaching and healing ministry, then in 
His sacrificial death, and finally in His triumph over 
death. This was the essence of the Christian Gospel. 
But it was still necessarily encased in terms of the 
Apocalyptic of His day, as was needful for our Lord's 
oral and popular method of teaching, the only way of 
reaching the minds of his contemporaries being through 
the working ideas of their own minds. 

4. The peril of such a method was that the passing 
form of the truth revealed should be identified with its 
abiding substance. In the Epistles, however, there is 
a further process of development whereby the inner 
power and meaning of the Gospel is seen emerging from 
its Jewish integument and taking on new and more 
elastic forms more consonant with the rapidly evolving 
realisation of the inner meaning of the Gospel. Here the 
creative principle of the Christian faith — the Christo- 
logical element — is seen triumphing over its early 
Apocalyptic forms, and faith in the crucified and risen 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 191 

Lord takes its permanent place as the creative germ of 
religious thought and experience. 

5. The central truth of the Incarnation and the Cross, 
however, was never, in New Testament times, nor for a 
long time afterwards, used as a key to many of the 
problems of faith concerning future destiny. The 
Apocalyptic writings dealt with the questions of the day 
in the light of the Gospel, and it is idle for us to look 
there for a definite answer to many questions which are 
of supreme interest for us, but which had not occurred 
to any in that early age, absorbed as it was in the 
pressing practical problems arising out of the position 
of the infant Church in the Roman Empire. These writ- 
ings had to do with the founding, organising, and con- 
solidation of the first Christian communities; with 
ethical applications of the Gospel in the light of the 
universal expectation of the Second Coming of the 
Lord, and with the destiny of believers in the life to 
come. The more closely we study these writings, the 
more profound is the impression borne in upon us of the 
astonishing thoroughness with which this is done. Each 
writer has his own point of view both theologically and 
ethically, but on fundamental matters all are in com- 
plete ethical and spiritual agreement. And it is aston- 
ishing how much light on human need and duty in all 
ages and under all conditions has shone in upon man- 
kind from these sunlit pages. But the very complete- 
ness with which the work of applying the revelation of 
God in Christ to the conditions of the primitive Church 
was done, is a limitation as well as an advantage for 
us. In the course of the ages, the focus of religious 
thought has changed many times, new problems have 



19^ Faith and Immortality 

arisen, new questions have been asked, new solutions 
are required. The history of doctrine proves that in 
certain directions Christian thinkers have not felt in any 
way hampered by the Jewish framework of thought in 
the New Testament from re-expressing the essence of 
certain great truths in terms borrowed from their own 
philosophical and scientific vocabularies — as in the case 
of the nature of Christ, the mystery of the Atonement 
and of the New Life, the theory of the Church, and 
kindred topics. In other directions religious thought 
has never quite broken loose from its Jewish moorings, 
the truth being identified with the temporary form in 
which it was first expressed, and little progress has 
been registered. It is only during the past generation, 
for instance, that the Jewish cosmogony, or idea of 
creation, has broken down under the irresistible impact 
of the evolutionary theory (even to-day there is still a 
rearguard of theologians who think in terms of the 
Ptolemaic astronomy, which has been discredited for 
four centuries). One more step has to be taken in order 
to free ourselves from the incubus of outworn Theory. 
We must accept the historical method of dealing with 
the facts of revelation, and this not only as regards the 
documents of Scripture, but also the thought contained 
in them. By so doing we are able to distinguish be- 
tween what was of merely temporary significance, and 
what has persisted, and must continue to persist 
through all time, and we can see how what is most 
essential has passed through stages of development and 
growth which are even yet incomplete. By giving our- 
selves devoutly and honestly to the explication of this 
process, we are not only helping in the further unfold- 



The Primitive Church and the Future Life 193 

ing of the rich contents of the eternal Gospel of the grace 
of God, but are privileged to become the channels of 
that process for our own day, and co-workers with Him 
in His ceaseless Self-manifestation and saving energy. 
In this rapid and imperfect study of the history of the 
doctrine of the Last Things in the Bible, it has been 
our purpose to contribute something to this end, and to 
establish ourselves at the " growing-point " of truth. 



13 



PART III 
CONSTRUCTIVE 

CHAPTER I 

IMMORTALITY AND THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 

THIS LIFE 



"The scale on which an immortal being is planned is not 
commensurable with any measure of mortality : and what to 
a mortal might well seem unmitigated evil may appear to the 
immortal only a discipline the better qualifying him for im- 
mortality. We might well imagine that were his mortal life 
to be his whole and sole existence, then it ought to be like 
a sweet pastoral melody.; but an immortal life is so vast that 
the prelude to it may fitly reach the proportions of a mighty 
epic, or be distinguished by the tragic situations that befit an 
immense drama." — A. M. Fairbairn : The Philosophy of the 
Christian Religion, p. 150. 



CHAPTER I 

IMMORTALITY AND THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 

THIS LIFE 

11 The whole purpose, the only raison d'itre of the world, is 
the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life, 
and perfectibility." — Alfred Russel Wallace. 

HAVING cast a rapid glance at the critical ques- 
tions recently raised concerning the mystery of 
the future life, and another on the history of the doctrine 
of immortality in Biblical times, we now return to our 
own special problems in the light of what has been 
written. First, however, a few words in recapitulation. 
In the first part we found reasons for affirming that 
the modern scientific movement, which for a time was 
profoundly sceptical of the traditional belief in a life 
after death, has failed to substantiate the causal de- 
pendence of the soul on its bodily organism. We also 
found in the constitution of human personality, and the 
inadequate scope permitted by the conditions of this 
life for the realisation of its possibilities, a presumptive 
argument in favour of its survival in a world of larger 
and finer spiritual opportunities. But we found neither 
in our release from the influence of materialistic assump- 
tions, nor in a consideration of the essential constitution 
of the soul itself, any sufficient grounds for a confident 
doctrine of survival. This, as shown in Part II., can 

197 



198 Faith and Immortality 

only be based on certain religious postulates, found his- 
torically in the revelation of God's nature and saving 
purpose for the world as progressively mediated 
through Jewish prophecy and Apocalyptic, crowned b) 
the final revelation given in the life, teaching, death 
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This revelation was, 
however, given in "earthen vessels"; encased, that is, 
in Apocalyptic forms which partly revealed and partly 
concealed the truth within them; and these forms must 
be sharply distinguished from their content in order 
that this may be realised in its fulness and purity. 

The abiding elements in the Christian revelation are 
its purely spiritual affirmations concerning the Father- 
hood of God, the demands of His Holy Love on the 
filial obedience of man, the certainty of righteous judg- 
ment in the life to come on sin and disobedience in 
this life, and the equal certainty of blessedness for 
those who enter into the higher life of forgiveness, fel- 
lowship, and service here. Here are simple but great 
affirmations, and they are the affirmations of Christian 
Religion. What goes beyond these can scarcely be "a 
faith." 

Great and simple as they are, however, they suggest 
many urgent questions which cannot be suppressed 
however hard we may try to do so. Nor is there any 
valid reason why they should be suppressed, providing 
only we handle them with becoming modesty and re- 
verence. This war has raised some of these questions 
afresh, and they press to-day with poignant insistence 
on millions of tired and troubled hearts. What, for 
instance, are the limits of moral probation for the human 
soul? Are the solemn issues of this life eternally 



The Moral Significance of this Life 199 

settled at the moment of death, or do the ministries of 
Divine mercy pursue the soul on its long journey into 
the Unknown ? Is it possible to reverse the decisions 
of this life in the life to come ? Further, while it is 
affirmed, "It is appointed unto men once to die, and 
after that judgment," are we to understand that the 
verdict passed on us on that dread Day involves an 
endless destiny of weal or woe ? Is there any hope for 
those who die " in sin " ? And for those who die pre- 
maturely before they have faced the ultimate issues of 
Eternal life or death ? Again, is the future life a state 
in which relations of friendship and love found here will 
be continued ? Will those who have lived together 
here know each other in the Beyond ? Will there be a 
reunion for sundered hearts, and a perfecting of moral 
and spiritual relations begun here? And, finally, are 
we justified in believing that God's plan of salvation 
will issue in the complete conquest of Evil, and the 
establishment of a universal Kingdom of Good ? If so, 
will it be by the final extinction of souls persistently 
evil, or by their final restoration ? In other words, is 
such a kingdom of good compatible with the continued 
existence of lost souls, however self-chosen their destiny, 
to endless ages ? 

These are not idle or trivial questions. They rise 
out of the depths of our moral being, and they demand 
such answers as the affirmations of faith in God as 
revealed in the Gospel permit us to give. If we view 
them steadily "in the light of the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ " we ought not to find ourselves in 
complete uncertainty on any one of them. 



200 Faith and Immortality 



I 

We begin our constructive argument by reaffirming a 
fundamental postulate of the Christian faith (already 
referred to when summarising the teaching of Jesus and 
His Apostles 1 ) — the profound and inescapable moral 
significance of this life. We hold that any theory of 
the future state which obscures or minimises this truth 
is essentially unchristian. 

It would be easy to show that this is not only a dis- 
tinctively Christian doctrine, but one whose roots run 
far back into the Old Testament revelation. Man is 
there represented as a moral being, created in the image 
of the Holy God who made him and sent him forth into 
life that he may win his way into assured sovereignty 
over his environment without, and over his own lower 
nature within. This can be attained by him only by 
obedient fellowship with God, and in a just reciprocal 
fellowship with his fellow-man. The struggle for this 
ideal state is the struggle for the Kingdom of God, 
which is the kingdom of perfected relationships between 
all the moral beings of the Universe. In the earlier 
stages of revelation, when the horizon of faith was 
limited to this present life, it was held that this per- 
fected state was attainable by humanity in the world 
that now is. Gradually it was seen that the stage, when 
thus limited, was too small for the drama, and faith rose 
boldly into the vision of another life where the ragged 
edges and inequalities of our earthly experience were 
gathered up and woven into a fuller and finer pattern. 

1 See pp. 142-144. 



The Moral Significance of this Life 201 

Finally the centre of thought and aspiration was shifted 
from this world into the next ; our doings here were seen 
to involve eternal issues, and life was viewed as a pil- 
grimage or probation for the Life Beyond. This we 
affirm is the distinctively Christian position, and if we 
would remain Christian in our attitude, we must be 
faithful to this view-point in all our thinking. 

Such a view of our life on earth — that it is a proba- 
tionary segment of our total existence, whose ultimate 
meaning is found in the life to come — throws a clear 
light on some of the perplexities of experience, while at 
the same time it creates difficulties in other directions. 



II 

In the first place, it solves many difficulties which are 
otherwise insurmountable. 

1. We have already dwelt on the fact that the scope 
afforded by this life is insufficient for the working out 
of the issues of human character. The soul is made for 
a world of values which is incommensurate with the 
world of facts. Its ideals outsoar the limits of attain- 
ment in the short years of our earthly pilgrimage. No 
psychic satisfactions, however keen, can satisfy its 
spiritual hunger and thirst. The nobler our aims, the 
less do we feel that they fit in with our present oppor- 
tunities for realising them. Personality at its best hope- 
lessly outsoars the cramped limits of our earthly en- 
vironment. If this life be all, then the more thoroughly 
we reach our moral and spiritual stature as men and 
women, the more irrational and unsatisfying does it 
prove to be. In that case, the writer of Ecclesiastes is 



202 Faith and Immortality 

justified in his cynical conclusion regarding the futility 
of all high moral endeavour. 

The Christian doctrine of the future life on the other 
hand meets this difficulty with an adequate solution. 
It endorses the outreach of the soul beyond the limits 
of time and space. It puts the seal of divine approval 
on the most daring moral enterprise. It provides 
adequate scope for the attainment of every ideal we can 
formulate. It sets its sanction on the man who gives 
his life as a willing sacrifice for the good of others, and 
for principles that cannot find their justification on any 
earthly basis. Life's highest ends become sacramental 
for those who can look forward to Eternity for their 
full attainment. 

2. The hope of immortality also dignifies the lesser 
temporary ends of life on earth. They fall into place 
in the vast scheme of the future as steps to the goal, 
as stages in the process. The duties of a day lose their 
triviality when viewed as details in a large and noble 
destiny which depends for its completeness on the 
fidelity of its parts, and on their due subordination to 
the idea of the whole. Everything is worth doing well 
that helps, in however small a degree, to the perfecting 
of a world of souls who are destined to live for ever. 
Similarly, the smallest outgoings of influence take on 
a solemn significance when we remember that we are 
thereby helping to make or mar other souls whose 
eternal destiny may be affected by our doings. "De- 
stroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died." 
Wise or foolish words, kind or vicious deeds, the per- 
petual moral pressure and play of one personality on 
another, are shaping the issues of life and death for all 



The Moral Significance of this Life 203 

involved. The passing ethical relationships of men are 
lifted to a higher plane of significance in exact propor- 
tion to the place that eternity enters into our thoughts 
concerning them. These relationships may pass from 
one phase to another, but their issues abide for ever. 

3. The Christian doctrine of sin finds its justification 
in the eternal issues of life. All voluntary action which 
tends to the dominance of sense — the passing element 
in our conscious life — over soul — which is the element 
that abides to eternity — is seen to be irrational and 
evil, and comes under the final condemnation of the 
enlightened conscience. We carry with us the effects of 
our conduct into the Unseen. Thus, all that lowers our 
spiritual vitality, all that lessens the sense of God's 
presence and power, all that gives false glamour to what 
is material, mundane, self-centred, evanescent, is branded 
as inimical to our highest good. Nothing is right 
which tends to imprison the soul in the temporal order ; 
nothing is wrong which leaves it free to set its affections 
on things Divine and Eternal. This is the Christian 
test to which every moral action must conform or be 
rejected. It finds its justification in the fact that 
human personality is the most sacred of all earthly 
realities, and that its well-being and perfection are the 
supreme interests of time and eternity. If this is so, 
then the Divine wrath against sin is seen to be the 
expression of His deepest nature, and the gracious gift 
of His Son for man's redemption becomes the central 
and creative fact of history. 

4. The " otkerworldliness" of the Christian concep- 
tion of life is also justified in the light of immortality. 
Not the otherworldliness which despises this world, and 



204 Faith and Immortality 

depreciates the value of the passing sources of enjoy- 
ment and happiness, but that nobler kind which keeps 
these in due subordination to eternal ends. 

We may here return to a matter touched on earlier 
in summarising the teaching of our Lord on the 
Parousia. 1 We there pointed out the distinction that has 
been drawn between the Apocalyptic (or disruptive) and 
the Eschatological (or gradual) consummation of the 
Kingdom, and to the theory that the true historical fulfil- 
ment of the former was the inauguration of the life of 
spiritual personal fellowship with Christ which took 
place at Pentecost, and which has been fulfilled ever 
since in the mystical life of believers; while the latter is 
to receive its fulfilment in the Heavenly State. What- 
ever we may think of the exegetical question involved, 
this distinction is profoundly true to Christian experi- 
ence. The heavenly kingdom within the soul is un- 
questionably brought about by a disruptive change of 
centre from the natural or "sarkic" (arap/ci/cos) life, to 
the spiritual or " pneumatic " {Trvev^aTtico^) . This in- 
volves a radical change in our outlook on life as a 
system of ends. The centre of interest is moved from 
the earthly order to the heavenly; the personal life is 
controlled not by selfish or individual motives, but by 
those that flow from the Christ-life within, and becomes 
in virtue of that fact a "life hidden with Christ in 
God." 2 This foundation of human conduct in the 

1 See pp. 176, 177. 

2 " This is the real significance of that principle of disruptive- 
ness which Mr. Garrod (in his Religion of All Good Men) has 
so aptly pointed out in the Gospel teaching. That is the mean- 
ing of that immediate Apocalyptic coining of the Son of Man. 
It is a mystical experience that takes place in the Christian 



The Moral Significance of this Life 205 

supernatural order is the explanation of that other- 
worldly spirit which is the true mark of the Christian 
soul. Its " conversation " is in heaven ; its hopes, aspira- 
tions, incentives come from the Unseen and the Eternal ; 
it is the power of an endless life within the experience 
of the natural life, which it has the secret of trans- 
muting into spiritual equivalents, "using" the world 
while not abusing it, and drawing from the happenings 
of the day rich material for the upbuilding of the " life 
eternal," which is its true sphere and destiny. 

The condition of fulfilling this destiny is entrance 
into fellowship with God, whose gift is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. On those to whom this 
opportunity is revealed in this life there thus rests a 
responsibility so tremendous that every other pales 
beside it into utter insignificance. We are set here, 

" Amid this dance 
Of plastic circumstance," 

that we may rise out of the natural life into the spiritual, 
so that we may become sons of the Resurrection, if only 
we are "found worthy." Those who fail to do so miss 
their one earthly chance of attaining the end for which 
they were born. Apart therefore from the question 
whether another chance will be given us hereafter, the 
moral significance of this life is profound and incal- 
culable. Whatever may happen hereafter, this great 

soul. One may even trace within the pages of the New Testa- 
ment the stages by which the primitive Church passed from 
the Apocalyptic framework to the kernel of truth which lay 
beneath it. When she discovered this she found it to be iden- 
tical with her innermost experience " (L. S. Thornton, Con- 
duct and the Supernatural, p. 172). 



206 Faith and Immortality 

opportunity will have been lost, and to lose it is to lose 
it for ever, for here we live but once, and when our 
earthly probation is over, it cannot come again. It is 
this fact which explains the urgency of the Gospel ap- 
peal in the New Testament from its first page to its last. 
Everywhere we hear the voice of appeal, warning, judg- 
ment, finality. The talent is entrusted to us — let us 
use it well; the seed is sown — let the soil welcome it 
and give it room and nourishment that it may grow; 
the invitation is sent forth — let those who receive it 
refuse it at their peril; the pearl of great price, the 
boundless treasure, are discovered — let him who finds 
sell all that he hath, that he may possess them; the 
door is opened — let all enter, ere it be finally closed. 
These solemn notes in the Master's teaching find their 
echo in the Apostolic message; and the refrain we find 
everywhere is summed up in these solemn words, " How 
shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ?" How 
true this appeal and warning are is testified to by every 
awakened conscience. Our life here is a series of irre- 
coverable chances, of irreversible choices, none of which 
recur, all of which have a clear bearing on our destiny. 
Even were there no after-life into which we carry with 
us the residual results of our experience here in en- 
riched or impoverished personalities, there would be 
food for thought in these considerations; but in the 
light of life's solemn issues "beyond the veil" they take 
on a significance which is immeasurable, and invest 
the passing moments of time with meanings pregnant 
for eternity. All this is true whatever view we hold of 
the possibilities of renewed probation after death. 



The Moral Significance of this Life 207 



III 

This general presentation of the immense moral signi- 
ficance of this life finds its endorsement in the Christian 
doctrine of judgment which bulks so largely in the 
pages of the Bible. In a dim and tentative way it finds 
a place in the earlier stages of revelation; as the light 
grows, it takes ever more definite shape and colour; in 
the New Testament it occupies a place in the forefront 
of its teaching and appeal. The neglect into which this 
doctrine of the Christian Faith has fallen is symptomatic 
of a degenerate element in recent religious thought, and 
is to be deprecated. What finds so vivid and central a 
place in the teaching of Jesus and Paul cannot be sur- 
rendered without losing touch with an essential truth. 
It is necessitated by the character of God and by the 
nature of man. 

1. It is demanded by the character of God as holy 
and just. It appears first in the writings of Amos and 
Hosea as one side or aspect of such a God as they 
reveal — His lovingkindness and severity. Being what 
He is, He is bound to vindicate the righteous and to 
manifest His wrath against the ungodly. Thus we 
find in the prophetic literature that there is a " Day of 
Jahweh," first as a vindication of Israel against their 
enemies, then of Himself against Israel (Amos and 
Hosea); then as a "world judgment" (Zephaniah, as 
a corollary to the monotheistic faith of that prophet). 
This idea reappears in an ever-clearer form in Apoca- 
lyptic literature — i.e., either as a judgment of the living 
and certain classes of the dead, or of all rational beings 



208 Faith and Immortality 

on the advent of the Kingdom, or of all rational beings 
at the close of the Kingdom. 1 By the time of our Lord 
this idea had taken complete possession of the field of 
thought; so much so that it became an axiom of the 
popular religion. In the teaching of Jesus the idea is 
winnowed of all secondary aspects, and becomes a 
spiritual assize in which a final pronouncement will be 
made on the issues of character in the light of God's 
righteousness and love. It implies that in the final 
consummation of the Universe all rational beings re- 
ceive their due to the full. 2 It is needless to refer to the 
numberless passages in the New Testament where the 
urgency of this idea is pressed home on the hearts of 
men. In season and out of season Jesus recurs to this 
thought ; it is impossible for any reader of his words to 
ignore "how large a proportion the language of rebuke 
and warning bears to the language of consolation and 
promise; the one is as grave, as anxious, as alarming 
as the other is gracious beyond hope." 3 "All this," 
another thoughtful writer has observed, "finds an echo 
in the conscience of those who have any sense of God as 
a Power not ourselves, making for righteousness. No 
man can feel that God is, and is the moral law alive, 
and not feel that in due time He must express His whole 
meaning regarding the ways and conduct of men." 4 

2. It is demanded also by the nature of man. There 
is, it is true, a judgment-seat in every man's heart, where 

1 See references in Charles, Critical History of the Doctrine 
of a Future Life, p. 422. 

2 Charles, loc. cit., p. 399. 

8 Dean Church, Human Life and its Conditions. 

4 H. R. Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future, pp. 182, 183. 



The Moral Significance of this Life 209 

a verdict is pronounced on every moral act, by the still 
small voice which is at once his accuser and judge. 
Many Christian writers hold that there is no other 
judgment than is pronounced by this voice of con- 
science, which so often " doth make cowards of us all." 
But this is to surrender the distinctive Christian posi- 
tion. For conscience, in spite of its august authority, 
is too uncertain an exponent of the moral law to 
fulfil the function of a final judgment on human affairs. 
In those who need its verdict most, it is often seared by 
neglect and silenced by disobedience; in others, it is 
a mere reflection of the standards of conduct that hap- 
pen to express themselves in the social environment; in 
the best men, it is often morbidly sensitive, and liable 
to temperamental aberrations and exaggerations. St. 
Paul keenly felt the inadequacy of conscience whether 
in its social or individual aspects as an ultimate 
arbiter of conduct, and found relief in the thought of 
an ideal objective standard perfectly kind and severely 
just, to which he felt bound, and which some day would 
be set forth in the " revelation of Jesus Christ." " But 
with me," he says, "it is a very small thing that I shall 
be judged of you, or of man's judgment : yea, I judge 
not mine own self. For I know nothing against 
myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that 
judgeth me is the Lord" (1 Cor. iv. 3, 4). To such a 
man it was a relief as well as an incentive to remember 
that it was impossible to escape from the searching 
verdict to be pronounced at last on human life in the 
High Court of Jesus Christ. The clear certainty, the 
delicate justice, the finality of that verdict were ever 
before him; in a world filled with moral confusion and 

14 



210 Faith and Immortality 

make-believe, he found comfort in the conviction that in 
the end all would be made clear, and perfect justice be 
done to all. 

It is time we recovered our faith in this principle of 
final judgment on the achievements and failures in this 
life. We can surrender without detriment the Apoca- 
lyptic and imaginative form which it takes in the lan- 
guage of the New Testament; but we cannot without 
immense moral loss ignore the reality it embodies. Nor 
must we forget the fact that good men as well as bad 
will have to pass that final scrutiny. When Paul wrote, 
"We must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
Christ," he was thinking not of unbelievers but of those 
who, like himself, had entered on the blessings of the 
kingdom. The thought recurs again and again in his 
Epistles. To the Romans he writes, " So then each one 
of us shall give account of himself to God" (xiv. 12); 
to the Corinthians, "Let a man so account of us, as of 
ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of 
God. Here, moreover, it is required in stewards that a 
man be found faithful" — i.e., in the day of reckon- 
ing (1 Cor. iv. 1, 2). The same thought occurs in 
Hebrews xiii. 17, "Obey them that have the rule over 
you, and submit to them : for they watch for your souls, 
as they that shall give account" (cf. 1 Pet. iv. 10, 11). 
Thus is the true panacea for that Antinomian spirit 
which is every ready to break forth in the Church in 
view of the free forgiveness and justifying love revealed 
in the Gospel, which tempt the shallow-hearted to think 
it matters not how they live when once they are enclosed 
within the fold of Christ. There is judgment for all: 
none shall escape. Our life on earth, both in its out- 



The Moral Significance of this Life 2 1 1 

ward doings and its inner temper and nature, abides 
the scrutiny of the all-loving, who is also the all-holy. 
Such a thought is a perpetual corrective against slack- 
ness, formality, sloth, and carelessness of life, and a 
daily stimulus to self-examination and improvement. 

Thus does the sure hope of immortality in its various 
bearings on conduct enhance the moral significance of 
this life. It safeguards all ethical values; it furnishes 
a permanent standard against which we must measure 
all the passing fashions of thought; it ensures that no 
sin, however hidden or secret, shall escape its rightful 
condemnation; it nourishes a spirit of solicitude and 
responsibility in little things as well as great. Nor is 
the doctrine of judgment, which is inseparable from the 
Christian outlook, a hard or forbidding thing. On the 
other hand, to quote Professor Mackintosh's wise and ten- 
der words, " To be tried at last in Christ's presence, may 
be truly designated as the last means of grace for the re- 
deemed. There will be pain in it doubtless beyond 
our imagining — the purifying and emancipating shame 
of those who bend under the condemnation of perfect 
love, in full assurance that for all their guilt they will 
not be cast out. But our sin will then be shown us, not 
to torture us, but in order that more and more we may 
understand the length and breadth and greatness of 
His mercy who knows what is in man." 1 

1 Immortality and the Future, p. 124. 



CHAPTER II 
IMMORTALITY AND HUMAN PROBATION 



1 Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 
That metaphor! and feel 

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay — 
Thou, to whom fools propound, 
When the wine make its round, 
1 Since life fleets, all is change; the 
Past gone, seize to-day 1 ' 
***** 
He fixed thee midst this dance 
Of plastic circumstance, 

This present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest, 
Machinery just meant 
To give thy soul its bent, 
Try thee and fit thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 

Sffi * SfC Jj< 5p 

So take and use Thy work : 
Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o* the stuff, what warpings past the aim 1 
My times are in thy hand ! 
Perfect the cup as planned! 

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same ! " 
Browning : Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



CHAPTER II 

IMMORTALITY AND HUMAN PROBATION 

" Life is probation, and the earth no goal, 
But starting-point for Man." 

Browning. 

WE have seen that in the light of the Christian 
doctrine of Immortality, this life takes on the 
aspect of a moral probation. It may be equally well 
described as a discipline, an education, a quest after 
perfection, or even a period of gestation for the soul. 
But for our purpose we shall find the word probation 
sufficiently accurate and inclusive. For character is 
determined in the last analysis by the result of our 
preference for this or that alternative of conduct day 
by day. Some of these choices are trivial and seem- 
ingly evanescent, some are important and fateful, but 
they all leave their traces, and help to build up or im- 
poverish our moral personality. But there is one great 
alternative which comes to all on whom the light of 
God's truth shines through the Gospel, which involves 
issues so far-reaching and vital, that we may rightly 
represent it as determining our whole future destiny. 
It is the alternative whether we will accept or reject the 
offer of redemption from sin, and the renewal of the 
deepest springs of our spiritual life, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. By our response to this appeal we 
shall all stand or fall at last. In the end — such is the 

215 



2i6 Faith and Immortality 

natural inference — there will be but two classes of souls 
— those who accept or reject this offer. It is impossible 
to read the New Testament through with an open mind 
without this conclusion being forced on us. 

The question thus comes home to us with urgency, 
What are the limits of moral and spiritual probation 
for the human soul ? Is this brief spell of life the only- 
arena on which the battle is to be fought for the soul's 
redemption, by the issue of which our place and destiny 
is to be irrevocably fixed ? Momentous as the issue 
of our present experience must in any case be — this 
being our only chance here — are we empowered and 
forced by the Christian revelation to affirm that once 
death is passed and the period of our earthly proba- 
tion is at an end, there is no further prospect of being 
able to reverse our attitude and enter on the life eternal ? 
When Goethe sings, 

" Choose well, your choice is 
Brief and yet endless,' ' 

and Matthew Arnold writes in a mood more uncom- 
promising — 

" FoiPd by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn, 
We leave the brutal world to have its way, 
And, Patience ! in another life, we say, 
The world shall be thrust down and we upborne. 
And will not then the immortal armies scorn 
The world's poor routed leavings? Or will they 
Who fail'd not under the heat of this life's day 
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn? 
No, No ! the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun ; 
And he who flagged not in the heavenly strife 
From strength to strength advancing — only he 
Mounts, and that hardly to eternal life," 



Immortality and Human Probation 217 

are we to understand that their attitude represents the 
incontrovertible verdict — the last word — of the highest 
revelation of God's dealings with His children ? 



I 

There is an ambiguity in the way this question is 
often put, which must be cleared away at the outset. 
The human race in relation to the Gospel is divisible into 
two great sections — those who have had the opportun- 
ity of accepting the Christian redemption on the one 
side, and those on the other to whom this opportunity 
has not been presented at all in this life, or has been 
presented inadequately. Again, the former section is 
divisible into three classes — those who have fully ac- 
cepted it, and have therefore " passed out of death into 
life"; those who (apparently at least) have finally re- 
jected it, and live in self-centred alienation from, or 
open enmity against, God; and those who have as yet 
not faced the issue, nor fully determined their attitude 
towards it. It is clear that these various classes occupy 
a very different position in relation to our question, and 
that in dealing with it, this crucial fact must be fully 
borne in mind. For instance, if the offer of eternal 
life through Jesus Christ is the final touchstone of char- 
acter and therefore of destiny, can we speak of those 
who have never heard of it as in the same category of 
judgment as those who have known it all their lives? 
Again, since a condition of vacillation and uncertainty 
is very different from one of conscious rejection or of 
hearty acceptance, we can scarcely deal with all these 



218 Faith and Immortality 

types as though they stood on the same plane; for at 
any time, with possibly only a briefly extended period 
of probation, the intermediate class might pass into 
either of the others. We must therefore deal with each 
of these classes separately in the light of the essential 
principles of the Christian Faith. For lack of making 
this clear distinction, Christian thought on the problem 
of probation and destiny has from the beginning been 
lacking in logical clearness and in moral cogency. 



II 

Let us first consider those who have had an ade- 
quate opportunity of realising the solemn alternative. 

Of those who have been brought up in the full light 
of the Gospel, to whom it has been faithfully preached, 
and who have felt the full pressure of its appeal to the 
conscience, we may say that the great alternative has 
been adequately presented in this life. It would be 
difficult to conceive a better chance in this or any other 
state X)i existence than many of us have had of surren- 
dering our whole being to the will and purpose of God 
as revealed in Jesus Christ. There are millions of souls 
throughout the ages to whom the unmistakable call 
has come, and who have realised its fateful significance 
in some great moment of illumination. How in that 
moment they responded to the call, determines their 
attitude usually for the rest of their lives. They passed 
into the privilege of the Kingdom, or they turned away 
from it into the darkness and spiritual helplessness of 
a self-centred and sinful life. We may say of the 



Immortality and Human Probation 219 

former, not indeed that they are already perfect, or that 
they can ever attain perfection in this life, but that with 
all their faults and failings, they are grasped in the 
deeps of their being by the saving forces of the Gospel, 
and have been quickened thereby into "newness of 
life." We may say of the latter that with all the 
excellencies they may still possess, they are fundament- 
ally under the sway and dominance of their lower 
nature, and that the trend of their character is away from 
God, and from the "life eternal" which can be realised 
only in fellowship with Him, and in obedience to His 
holy will. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 
these two classes do exist, and that so far as can be 
judged from observation they have taken their deliber- 
ate and final stand for or against the appeal of the 
higher life. 

It would, however, be a crude mis judgment to classify 
all to whom the Gospel has been preached as belonging 
to one or other of these two classes. Before the great act 
of decision can take place in any man certain subjective 
conditions must be fulfilled. The soul must be 
awakened to a clear sense of the tremendous signi- 
ficance of the spiritual issues involved, and this awaken- 
ing depends on many factors, which are by no means 
always under the control of the will. What truly re- 
ligious man can look back on his own experience with- 
out feeling that there was a large element of contingency 
in the way his conversion took place? Suddenly, it 
may be after years of placid listening to the word of life 
during which his better nature was dormant, a chance 
word, an unforeseen calamity, a conversation with a 
friend, a great physical deliverance, the loss of someone 



22o Faith and Immortality 

near and dear, a sentence in a book, a startling accident, 
took place, and lo ! the issues of life and death were 
unveiled in all their solemn majesty, and we became 
different men for all time. In other cases, it was the 
result of a process as gradual as a dawn slowly expand- 
ing to the perfect day, and we knew that the decisive 
hour had come and gone only by an inner conviction 
that in some mysterious way a great crisis had been 
experienced, leaving behind it a "new creature" in a 
"new world." Some, like the man in our Lord's parable, 
found their treasure as by a Providential accident when 
engaged in other tasks ; to others it came as to the mer- 
chantman seeking goodly pearls, who at last lighted on 
the pearl of great price and felt that it was worth all 
that he had. To many, however, it would appear this 
experience of sudden or gradual illumination never 
comes in this life at all. They are neither in a " saved " 
nor in a "lost" spiritual state. They have never 
awakened to the mighty issues of their spiritual destiny ; 
they are religiously asleep. It is impossible to describe 
them as having rejected the call of God to walk in 
newness of life, nor have they obeyed it. At any 
moment such souls may awake; long years may pass 
and nothing happen to them. Most of those who have 
passed through the crisis of conversion remember a 
period like this in their experience ; and it is fairly clear 
that the vast majority of our fellow-men are in this 
stage of spiritual evolution. They are not "saved," 
but they are "salvable," as an army chaplain recently 
described the bulk of the soldiers at the front ; they are 
not "lost," but the hour may come when they will slip 
into that awful path which " leadeth to destruction." 



Immortality and Human Probation 221 

Down to quite recent times, Protestant thinkers 
classed these undecided souls in the same category as 
those who lived abandoned and sinful lives. In a 
"state of nature" all men were under the wrath and 
judgment of God, and there was but one way out of 
this condition — repentance and faith. There is enough 
truth in this position to call for profound solicitude on 
the part of all those whose business is the "cure of 
souls," for whether a man be unawakened or openly evil 
there is only one way into the Kingdom for sinful men. 
There is, however, a mischievous error in the above atti- 
tude inasmuch as it obscures the profound distinction 
between those who are given over consciously and wil- 
fully to a godless life, and those who are not. This 
distinction is surely fundamental. And yet it has been 
taken for granted by half Christendom (for the Roman 
Church, with all her errors, has never been guilty of 
this), on the ground of a crude interpretation of certain 
passages in Scripture, that all who pass through life in 
a state of spiritual indecision or slumber are in the same 
case as those whose decision has been clearly given for 
a life of sin, and that no further opportunity will be 
given to them. This is to believe that the Searcher of 
hearts who is the righteous judge of all, and who deter- 
mines their destiny, is less discriminating in His judg- 
ment of men than they are of each other. For no just 
judge in any earthly court would be guilty of such 
elementary injustice. How much less the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose will is that none 
should perish but that " all should come to a knowledge 
of the truth " ! 



222 Faith and Immortality 

III 

Again, let us consider the relation of death to human 
probation. 

What is death ? Physiologically, it is the dissolu- 
tion of the vital bond between the soul as the living 
principle, and the body which is its organism. Psycho- 
logically it is the end of our conscious life on earth. 
Morally it is the cessation of our present opportunities 
of ethical action and development — the end of our 
earthly probation. Now, whatever be our views of the 
origin of death — whether that it is the inevitable sequence 
and end of the physiological processes, as modern science 
appears to teach us; or that it is the ^natural con- 
sequence of our lapsed moral condition, and in no way 
inevitable except as sin has made it so, as the Bible 
has been held to teach us two things are abundantly 
, clear. First, it is the end of our chances of moral better- 
ment in this life ! and secondly, it comes to men in ways 
that are entirely out of relation, as far as the closest 
observation enables us to judge, to their moral condi- 
tion. It is always uncertain in its incidence. We know 
not what a day may bring forth to any of us. Some 
men die in a green old age; others in early infancy; or 
they may die at any age between these two extremes. 
Some do not die till they have gone through all the 
normal experiences of human life; others are cut off in 
the midst of their days ; others before they have well 
entered on their "choices and chances." Before the 
end it is given to many to come under fullest spiritual 
illumination; to others death comes when in a state of 
profound spiritual ignorance ; to others before they have 



Immortality and Human Probation 223 

awakened to the urgency of the call that has always 
been sounding in their ears. There is no correspond- 
ence between our spiritual condition and our chances of 
continued living, or our liability to sudden death. The 
two series of facts move along different but intersecting 
paths of causation. Unquestionably moral factors are 
intermingled with the physical; many die before their 
time, because they have ruined their constitution by 
riotous living; and length of days is often the reward 
of pure and virtuous living. But there is no evidence 
to prove that unconverted souls are ever providentially 
guarded from death in order that they may have a full 
chance of redemption before it is too late. While, 
therefore, we must hold that the issues of life and death 
are ever in the hands of God, it is quite impossible to 
relate them to the preparedness or otherwise of those 
who are called upon at any minute to pass the dread 
portal that separates this life from the next. 

Unless, therefore, there is a secret factor at work 
which equalises the probationary chances of all men, it 
is no longer possible to hold together the two proposi- 
tions that death ends probation for all men, and that 
God is just to all. The Calvinist solved this difficulty 
by inventing a doctrine of " Divine decrees," and affirm- 
ing the sovereignty of God in an uncompromising form. 
Some men were elected to salvation and some to perdi- 
tion, but why this was so was God's secret ; nor had we 
any right to ask. He who made us, hath He not a right 
to do what He wills with His own? "Hath not the 
potter power over the clay to make of the same lump 
one vessel to honour and another to dishonour?" 
(Rom. ix. 21). On such premises, our moral sense is 



224 Faith and Immortality 

paralysed; all rational judgment of God's relations to 
men is impossible; faith becomes a blind assent to an 
ethical contradiction that is insoluble. Browning's 
caustic poem Caliban has given the coup de grdce to 
this monstrous theory of human destiny. 

Some recent writers of gentler temper find comfort 
in the thought that no one can tell what miracles of 
awakening and grace may not supervene on behalf of 
the undecided or even the obstinately impenitent at the 
moment and article of death, however sudden and un- 
foreseen. We would not limit the heart's legitimate 
tendency to hold the hopefullest theory of death-bed 
repentance. It can, however, at best only mitigate our 
difficulty ; it cannot remove it. For in the first place it 
is an argument "from ignorance"; we do not know 
what happens at death with anyone. Nor can it affect 
those cases in which death occurs quite instantaneously, 
or during sleep, or after long unconsciousness. And while 
there are doubtless many apparent instances of such 
"last moment" conversions, we are not in a position 
to test their genuineness, and can only hope against hope 
that if they had occurred during life they would have 
proved permanent. Finally, while such evidence as 
comes to us through the testimony of physicians and 
nurses in our hospitals who are constantly observing 
what takes place at death tells heavily against the 
theory that such conversions frequently occur, there 
is no evidence whatever that death involves any moral 
crisis in the vast majority of cases. The worst men 
usually die as calmly and quietly as the best : a long 
"stupor mortis" effectually veils what may be going on 
in the recesses of the soul in the case of ninety-nine out 



Immortality and Human Probation 225 

of every hundred persons. While therefore we are 
bound to believe in the illimitable mercy of God to the 
vilest sinner on this side of the grave, any theory that 
the apparent inequalities of spiritual opportunity are 
set right for all at the moment of death rests on too frail 
and supposititious a basis to satisfy the reason or the 
moral judgment. Nay, such a theory, if made absolute, 
would endanger the very issues at stake. Tell men 
that, however godless their life, they are fairly sure to 
be able to shirk the retribution they so richly deserve by 
a kind of death-bed miracle, and you cut the nerve-fibre 
of the moral appeal to their will. The solemn urgency 
of the Gospel claim on their acceptance loses its edge 
and vanishes in a misty sentimentality. However well- 
meaning such a notion may be, it is calculated to ease 
a perplexed faith at the expense of a dangerous com- 
plaisancy, and encourage multitudes of vicious persons 
to sin freely "that grace may abound." The true 
Christian position seems to be this — that while death- 
bed repentances are just possible they are exceedingly 
rare, and that those who continue in sin on such a 
theory run an infinite risk of finding themselves de- 
ceived and undone at last. Equally true is it that 
those who try to ease the theory that death ends pro- 
bation by a factitious and unreal hope that the stern 
medicine of death may accomplish what the normal 
ministries of life fail to accomplish are leaning on a 
frail reed. If we are to conclude that there is no further 
chance of redemption beyond the grave, and that 
Matthew Arnold's lines are true that — 

11 The energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun," 

15 



226 Faith and Immortality 

then let us frankly accept the issue, and plead with men 
to avoid the slightest delay in facing the issue and to 
surrender their will to the call of the Gospel to instant 
repentance lest it be for ever too late. 



IV 

Some answer to the problem whether human pro- 
bation is limited to this life becomes still more insistent 
when we consider the case of the vast majority of the 
human race who have never been brought under the 
light of the Gospel. 

Our Protestant forefathers frankly held that the 
heathen were irretrievably lost for this reason. They 
were indeed forced to this position by the logic of their 
creed. No salvation out of Christ; no probation after 
death; therefore no salvation for those who died in 
ignorance of the Gospel which alone contained the 
knowledge of the Saviour — such was the conclusion to 
which they were bound to come. The only mitigation 
of penalty they could suggest was that those who had 
sinned without law should perish without law (Rom. 
ii. 12), and that "he that knew not his lord's will, and 
did things worthy of stripes, should be beaten with few 
stripes" (Luke xii. 48). Some early writers found a 
further mitigation of sentence in the passages which 
speak of Christ as "preaching to the spirits in prison" 
(1 Pet. iii. 19), or of the Gospel "being preached to the 
dead" (ibid. iv. 6); but the incidental and obscure 
nature of these passages did little to ease the situation. 
For many centuries it was in effect taken for granted 
that though the heathen could not be held responsible 



Immortality and Human Probation 227 

for their ignorance of the Gospel, they were yet doomed 
righteously to everlasting perdition in spite of that 
ignorance; and that though their lot in hell might be 
modified on this ground, there was no possibility in the 
after-life of any renewed chance of probation. This seems 
to have been the position taken up by Dante. The great 
Protestant missionary societies initiated under the in- 
spiration of the Evangelical Revival were all based on 
this theory, and their ostensible appeals for help took 
much of their urgency from it. The wonder is that 
such a position did net force the Church at a much 
earlier period to strain its utmost energies in trying to 
evangelise a world thus faced by such a terrible doom. 
But it is not the heathen only who live and die in 
ignorance of the Gospel. No one who reads the past 
records of religion, or fairly envisages the facts of the 
present, can possibly hold that an effective knowledge 
of it is possessed by more than a small minority of 
those bred and born in the most favoured Christian 
land. It is easy to point out the multitude of churches 
and chapels in our own and other countries and to our 
numerous Sunday-schools and other educational 
agencies, and to the fact that the Bible is the most 
widely circulated book in the world. AH this is true, 
but it is not the whole truth. In a general and abstract 
way it may be affirmed that he who is really anxious to 
know the way of life has full means of finding it. The 
question, however, as to the effectiveness of these 
agencies to reach their object is not to be disregarded. 
Not till the great alternative has been brought home to 
the individual conscience can we say that the critical 
point in any man's life has been reached. True there 



228 Faith and Immortality 

are innumerable cases of men and women who have 
been brought up under the full light of the truth, who 
could scarcely have it brought home to their moral 
sense in any conceivable way more effectively than here. 
But how few are these cases in comparison with those 
of whom this cannot be said ! A distinguished theo- 
logian and preacher who had spent several months in 
close contact with the men at the Front recently told the 
writer that the proportion of British soldiers who were 
in practical ignorance of Christianity, and who had 
never been brought into anything like effective contact 
with the truth, was appallingly great. At a favourable 
estimate seventy per cent, of these men were entirely 
out of touch with the Church of Christ. It is easy to 
say that this is entirely their own fault ; but such a state- 
ment does not carry us far. It is mainly a question of 
environment. Multitudes of our fellow-citizens are being 
brought up in practical heathen surroundings, the 
mental and moral limitations of their upbringing having 
barred their way to a real knowledge of the essential 
truths of religion as truly as though they had been born 
in the wilds of Africa. Can we say of the denizens of our 
city slums that they have had an adequate knowledge 
of the Christian Gospel ? The worst that could be said 
of many of them is that they are heedless and careless 
of what they may have casually heard of it, not that 
they are incurably vicious and depraved. Under other 
circumstances many of them would no doubt have 
responded to a faithful appeal. And if so, dare we 
suggest that their failure to do so amid their present 
surroundings is a sufficient reason for condemning them 
to eternal perdition ? 



Immortality and Human Probation 229 

If, then, the only chance of redemption that men have 
is in this life, with all its inequalities and its contin- 
gencies, it is hard, if not impossible, to retain a hearty 
belief in the justice and lovingkindness of God. And 
further, on this hypothesis, we are forced to the con- 
clusion that the number of the "saved" will be utterly 
insignificant as compared with that of the "lost." This, 
indeed, was the conclusion to which earlier thinkers 
were forced to come — alas ! with little sense of com- 
punction apparently, since some of them thought that 
it would be a part of the felicity of the redeemed to 
behold the torture of the damned. Chrysostom doubted 
if one out of a hundred of the 100,000 souls in Antioch 
in his day would be among the " saved." Even as late 
as A.D. 1680 a quarto volume published in London called 
Moral Reflections upon the Number of the Elect, by 
D. Moulin, affirmed that not one in a million, from 
Adam down to those times, would be saved. "A flam- 
ing execration blasted the whole heathen world; a 
metaphysical quibble doomed ninety-nine out of every 
hundred in Christian lands. Collect the whole 
relevant literature of the Christian ages, from Ter- 
tullian to Jonathan Edwards (and much later), 
strike the average pitch of its doctrinal temper, and 
you get the result : that in the field of human souls 
Satan is the harvester, God is the gleaner; hell receives 
the vintage in its winepress of damnation, heaven only 
receives a few straggling clusters for salvation." 1 And 

1 See Alger, Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future 
Life (pp. 440, 441). " In the continent of human life Christian- 
ity occupies but an insignificant space. It covers but a score 
out of the thousands of centuries of human progression. Those 



230 Faith and Immortality 

this, we cannot but believe, is the only rational conclu- 
sion to which any unbiassed mind must come to on the 
theory that probation is limited to this life, and that 
there is no chance for anyone to come to a knowledge 
of the truth in the world to come. 



V 

It is, however, more than doubtful if any large num- 
ber of thinkers to-day really believe the traditional 
tenet that death ends all probation for mankind. 
Theoretically doubtless many do so. But the time 
has gone by for much heed to be given to beliefs that 
are merely theoretical. The real test of any creed is 
whether it is effective in practice — whether it really 
urges us to appropriate action. 

By way of testing how far this belief is genuinely 
held by average Christian people, let us consider a few 
significant facts of the present situation. 

When we entered on this colossal struggle in which 
25,000,000 of the youth of Europe are engaged, all 
ready to surrender their lives for their cause, all ready 

who ever did or could have heard of our Master are but an 
infinitesimal fraction of the sum of that mighty host of human 
beings who have appeared upon and passed off this world's 
stage. A means of attaining to immortality therefore which 
would be valid after a given date A.U.C. and within a given 
geographical area, could only be a mockery. It would be like 
a zoology whose laws held good only within a Thiergarten, and 
would be inapplicable to the beasts of the field. . . . Even the 
gift of eternal life might scarcely be accepted at God's hands if 
it came tainted with favouritism " (McConnell, Evolution of 
Immortality, pp. 131-133). 



Immortality and Human Probation 231 

to do their best to kill as many of their enemies as may 
be necessary in order to win victory for their side, we 
watched the gathering hosts of our voluntary army with 
open pride and exultation. From North and South, 
East and West, these bright and eager youths came 
flocking to the standard at their country's call, and 
presently their legions were swelled by contingents that 
poured into the fray from our vast dependencies. A 
little later, the rest of our youth were forced whether 
they would or no into the army. All were at once put 
through severe physical training for the purposes of 
war. Nothing was left undone to make them thorough 
and efficient soldiers. Presently came news of colossal 
losses at the Front. Every month the number of casual- 
ties has grown greater. Sorrow has swept like a salt 
wave over innumerable families; the rolls of honour in 
the porches of our churches contain an ever-increasing 
list of "heroes" who have made their last and greatest 
gift to their country — which is that a man should die 
for his friends. Their memory is deservedly held in 
honour, their names are whispered in tones of undying 
gratitude. During the whole of this time, however, 
there is no evidence whatever that there has been any 
great solicitude for their spiritual condition at the 
moment of death. More care and attention have been 
shown by the nation at large, and by most of the churches, 
to provide the soldiers with physical comforts and 
cigarettes than to ascertain whether these young souls 
are " ready " to die. No Church dignitary, no company 
of " simple believers " anywhere, has raised the question 
whether it is right to send young men to their doom, 
in however just a cause, without first ascertaining by 



23 ^ Faith and Immortality 

the most drastic tests whether they are spiritually 
" fit " to die. Pacifists have arisen in considerable num- 
bers protesting against war as totally inconsistent with 
the Christian ethic, but we are not aware that any of 
them have protested against it on the ground that 
it is inhuman to hurry thousands of unprepared men 
into perdition. In all the debates in Parliament, in all 
the published sermons on the war, in all the discussions 
as to the justifiability of war as a means of deciding 
international quarrels, has a single voice been raised 
calling attention to the fact that a man's eternal destiny 
depends irrevocably on his spiritual condition at 
death, and that therefore it is a diabolical thing to 
allow men to give their lives for their country unless 
they are in a " saved " condition, and certain of eternal 
felicity when they die? And yet, if we really believe 
that probation ends with death, we are guilty of this 
heinous and unspeakable crime. We are accepting as 
the price of the future of our Empire this awful holo- 
caust of sacrifice — that for us thousands of our young 
men are sent perforce, with our full sanction, not only 
into premature death (which forsooth is a sufficiently 
solemn thing to do), but into everlasting perdition — and 
this without protest, or shame, or apparent conscious- 
ness of its criminality on the part of anyone ! 

Nay, it is inconceivable that Christian people, in the 
face of this drastic test, any longer believe in this 
ancient doctrine, otherwise surely some indication would 
be somewhere given that they realise the unspeakable 
horror of the situation. Some may still hold theoretic- 
ally that death "ends probation"; but the whole 
attitude of the Christian world gives the lie to such a 



Immortality and Human Probation 233 

belief. Like all decaying doctrines, it has not been 
disproved; it has simply dropped out of our creed by 
its own unreasonableness and loss of vitality. None of us 
really believe it ; if we did life would be no longer bear- 
able for any lover of his kind; existence would be a 
nightmare of horror directly we realised the meaning of 
our creed — not because of the physical horrors of war, 
but because it involved damnation as well as death for 
legions of men who perished that we may retain our 
liberties, and our Empire its chance of future expansion. 
Would any humane and reasonable man be prepared to 
purchase this boon at such a price ? 

Nor can we, if the revelation of God in Christ is 
true, imagine that He, the Holy One and the Just, who 
knows what is in man both of actual evil and possible 
good, would accept it or suffer it to be. Whatever the 
many and repeated notes of warning in the words of 
Jesus may mean — words that sound like the solemn 
tones of a passing-bell — they cannot mean that every 
man's destiny is determined automatically by the 
incidence of death, irrespective of the innumerable moral 
differences between one man and another, and of the 
crucial facts that it is the few to whom the offer of 
salvation comes home with convincing power in this life, 
and fewer still who deliberately and finally reject it. 
What our Lord's words mean is that when we are faced 
with our realised moral responsibilities, and yet con- 
sciously shirk, neglect, or misuse them, then there is no 
going back on them to catch up the lost chance, but 
rather a sure going forward to judgment for our sin. 
Let us once realise that the severest words of Jesus 
apply not to the undecided, or the ignorant, or the 



234 Faith and Immortality 

immature souls, but to those who say "we see," and 
whose sin therefore " remaineth," and their severity is 
seen in their just proportion and perfect justice. It is, 
in other words, those who consciously refuse to enter 
His Kingdom of grace and love, or who once within it, 
play with their accepted responsibilities of service and 
duty, who call forth His final condemnation. For Him 
the "lost" were always salvable, the ignorant always 
capable of being awakened and reclaimed. It is for 
these He gave His life; and His glorious sacrifice will, 
we venture to believe, avail not only in this but in all 
worlds for those who, hearing the appeal of His love, 
cast themselves in penitence and faith at His blessed 
feet. Jesus would never reject anyone who had not 
first rejected Him, nor can we conceive Him as continu- 
ing to reject anyone who turned to Him, whether here 
or yonder, however long or far he may have wandered, 
however bitter his enmity may have been, or however 
heinous his sin. If any man, therefore, be finally lost, 
it must be by his own obstinate refusal to the pleadings 
of the "everlasting mercy." 



VI 

We thus come to our last question here, What are the 
conditions of an adequate probation ? Can we put any 
limit to these conditions in the case of a moral being ? 

Probation means trial under temptation. It is the 
state of a free moral being face to face with ethical 
alternatives, either of which he is free to choose without 
let or hindrance. These alternatives must be "living 
options" — i.e., they must have meaning, reality, and 



Immortality and Human Probation 235 

relevance to the practical issues of life. These options 
change from time to time, and become " dead " options 
as soon as they cease to bear on the living interests of 
experience. The interests of a child are not the interests 
of a man; the interests of a saint are in vivid contrast 
with the interests of a criminal, but every moral per- 
sonality has a set of interests at any given time which 
appeal to him as important. And every man has a 
conflicting set of interests between which he has to 
choose; and this fact constitutes his "probation." Life 
so far as it is ethical and spiritual is the experience of 
being called upon to go on choosing between these living 
options. When one set ceases to have any appeal, it 
falls into the background; but it is always succeeded 
by others on a different plane. So long as our ethical 
life lasts there will be this oscillation of the will between 
opposing options, good and bad, or good and better. 
As soon as such a process ended that would be the 
end of our ethical experience; we should cease to be 
moral beings in any true sense. 

From this it follows that probation must continue 
so long as moral personality persists. All progress in 
moral life consists in rightly determining our attitude 
towards each passing or permanent set of options, and 
so of rising to higher options. And when we speak of 
the heavenly state as sinless, it cannot mean that ethical 
freedom and choice end, but only that the heavy entail 
of our past sin is broken, and that we shall be more and 
more free to choose the good and the holy in the ever 
finer and more delicate alternatives which constitute the 
material of our spiritual experience. A mechanical 
fixity of character would indeed be no real heaven for 



236 Faith and Immortality 

a living and aspiring soul; infinite progress must be a 
holy choosing between infinite possibilities of holiness. 
Conversely, if there be any who are finally lost, it 
will be those whose exercise of wrong choices has made 
it harder and ever harder for the will to identify itself 
with the better alternative and so climb out of evil ways 
to heights of goodness. When the power to choose the 
better has disappeared and a soul is finally identified 
with the worse, there is an end to the moral life in its 
proper sense, a condition described in Scripture as 
"destruction," "perishing," the "second death." If, 
and when, any soul reaches this state of unspeakable 
and hopeless degradation, we may well ask, Is it not 
reasonable, if not inevitable, that the next and last issue 
of its misspent probation must be complete and final 
annihilation? To this problem let us next address 
ourselves in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER III 

TWO THEORIES OF FUTURE DESTINY— 
I. : UNIVERSAL RESTORATION 



" Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race; 
Call on the lazy, leaden-stepping hours, 
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace, . 
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 
Which is no more than what is false and vain, 
And merely mortal dross : 
So little is our loss, 
So little is thy gain. 

For when, as each thing bad thou hast entombed, 
And last of all thy greedy self consumed, 
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss 
With an individual kiss; 
And joy shall overtake us as a flood, 
When everything that is sincerely good 
And perfectly divine, 

With Truth, and peace, and Love shall ever shine 
About the supreme throne 
Of Him to whose happy-making sight alone 
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb 
Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 
Attired with stars we shall for ever sit 
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and Thee, O Time. 

Milton. 



CHAPTER III 

TWO THEORIES OF FUTURE DESTINY— 
I. : UNIVERSAL RESTORATION 

" Truth for truth and good for good! 

The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just. 
Take the charm ' For ever ' from them, 
And they crumble into dust." 

Locksley Hall : Sixty Years After. 

BEFORE we do so, however, it will be necessary for 
us to consider an alternative theory of Future 
Destiny which has been held by some of the finest 
Christian thinkers of early times and more especially of 
our own day, which goes under the title of Universal 
Restoration. According to this theory we are called 
upon to postulate a continuance of our moral probation 
in the Life Beyond, during which the ministries of 
Divine Grace continue to act on the will of those who 
die in an unrepentant condition, with the assurance that 
in the end these will prove triumphant over all hind- 
rances in the sinful soul, and issue in the final salvation 
of all. This is the dreamland, the Enchanted land of 
theology, " the cloudland looming with rose-tinted peaks 
in the far aeonian future" which has fascinated some of 
the choicest and most saintly minds from the third 
century onwards, and has probably more votaries to- 
day than ever before. It appeals to us on the highest 
side of our sympathies if not of our reason, and opens 

239 



240 Faith and Immortality 

out a prospect so fair and glorious of the triumph of 
the redemptive plan, and the victory of Divine Love, 
that we cannot afford to let it go unless compelled to 
do so by the strongest possible reasons. 

The list of writers who have held this view of human 
destiny is formidable in numbers and weighty in 
authority. For its first tentative formulation we must 
go back to Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 190). It 
was put into more clear and logical form by Origen, and 
by Gregory of Nyssa (fourth century), who were followed 
by Didymus of Alexandria, Diodorus of Tarsus, and 
Theodore of Mopsuestia. It is significant, however, 
that all these writers belong to the Eastern Church, 
which was so long dominated by the Platonic philo- 
sophy, not one prominent divine of the Latin Church 
being found among its advocates (who were more under 
the sway of the dualistic Gnostic teaching). Not till 
the sixth century do we find any fresh exponent of the 
doctrine; but in the ninth, John Scotus Erigena, who 
was Pantheistic in his leanings, gave it a qualified 
advocacy. It fell into general disrepute in the Middle 
Ages, and during the Protestant Reformation, though 
we find some Restorationists, such as John Denk, in the 
sixteenth century. It was not till later that any large 
body of thinkers identified themselves with the theory, 
among whom we find Bishop Newton of Bristol, Wil- 
liam Law, Jeremy Taylor, Tillotson, Barrow, Cudworth, 
and Whichcote; while in the nineteenth century such 
scholars as Schleiermacher and Olshausen, a large num- 
ber of American writers, and among our own theolo- 
gians, Dr. Samuel Cox, Professor J. B. Mayor, Mr. 
Andrew Jukes, Frederick Denison Maurice, Archdeacon 



Theory of Final Restoration 241 

Farrar, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, and others, 
favour the theory, though they do not all identify them- 
selves with it. Speaking broadly, we may say that 
those who hold it, do so under the dominance of a theo- 
logical idea, finding in the sense of the loving sove- 
reignty of God an assurance that He cannot in the end 
fail to gain His will over the forces of evil; while those 
who repel it, do so under the stress of an anthropological 
idea, finding in the nature of human freedom and the 
dire consequences of sin, a bar to any such assurance. 
And it may be said that those who advocate it depend 
rather on the general sense and scope of Scripture, while 
their opponents are hindered from accepting it by cer- 
tain difficult passages, especially in the teaching of 
Jesus, which seem to proclaim the finality and irrevo- 
cability of the doom of the wicked. 



I 

Let us first consider the arguments for this theory 
which rise from the revealed character of God, and of 
His purpose for humanity. 

Christianity represents God as Holy Love, and as 
the Sovereign Lord of the Universe. Restorationists 
find it impossible to doubt that He has laid out the 
whole scheme of things in such a way that His bene- 
ficent will must in the end triumph over all obstacles 
which created beings can oppose to it. Sin is the chief 
of these obstacles. In order to overcome it, He has 
implanted certain principles of betterment in the world, 
and He sent His Son to die in order that its evil work 
might be defeated. As James Freeman Clarke has 

16 



242 Faith and Immortality 

expressed it, "The power of the human will to resist 
God is indeed indefinite, but the power of love is in- 
finite. Sooner or later then, in the economy of the ages, 
all sinners must come back in penitence and shame to 
the Father's house." 1 Even the ancient prophet could 
say of God, " As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no 
pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked 
turn from his wicked way and live" (Ezek. xxxiii. 11); 
and can we, who have seen the glory of God's redeem- 
ing purpose shining in the face of Jesus Christ, doubt 
that He can allow that purpose to be finally defeated ? 
And defeated it would be, if one soul remained finally 
unredeemed, as truly as it would if all were lost. 
Rather than that should happen, God would follow up 
His redeeming work in His Son by chastisements and 
punishments continued through untold ages, but the 
purpose of these would always be remedial, and they 
could not fail at last to purify every soul of its evil 
stain. To this religious argument is sometimes added 
a philosophical. God's will must work through all the 
contradictions and anomalies of the world to a final 
synthesis, and the only synthesis of a world of moral 
conflict is the unifying of all wills in love and obedience 
to the Universal will : it is a synthesis, that is, of recon- 
ciliation, in which all things are made subject to Him in 
holy assent. 

The fatal flaw in this line of reasoning is that in 
order to vindicate the character and saving purpose of 
God, injustice is wrought to the sanctity of the moral 
order. In the first place, it posits a principle of veiled 
determinism as rigid as that of Calvinism, the difference 
1 Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors, chap. xiv. 



Theory of Final Restoration 243 

being that in the Calvinistic scheme God's will is 
throughout absolute and supra-moral, since men's 
destiny is not determined by their conduct but by the 
secret decrees of God, predestinating some to eternal 
destruction, and others to everlasting life, while in the 
Universalist Scheme God's will is strictly moral in that 
He decrees the salvation of all men. The absolute 
victory of God can, however, be gained only on one con- 
dition — the free consent of His creatures. This shifts 
the ground of hope from theological to anthropological 
grounds. The character and sovereignty of God guar- 
antees that He will do all that Divine love can do to 
ensure the redemption of all souls; but does the nature 
of man guarantee that he will infallibly at long last 
surrender to its appeal? In other words, are the con- 
ditions of moral freedom such that we can confidently 
forecast the issue of men's final choices ? 

Before we pass on to the latter point, it is needful to 
say a word on the new Determinism which lies at the 
root of the Restorationist position. This has been 
expressed by a distinguished American theologian, Dr. 
G. A. Gordon in his "Ingersoll" lecture on "Immortal- 
ity and the New Theodicy." "Determinism simply 
means that, inasmuch as God is a reasonable Being, and 
purposes for man a reasonable good, and inasmuch as 
man is essentially and permanently a reasonable creature, 
it would appear that the Divine persuasions must be 
finally availing. And so long as God remains Eternal 
Reason, so long as man continues a reasonable being, 
and so long as His Maker proposes for him a reason- 
able good, and moves upon that good in a strength 
of Divine persuasions, moral necessity and moral 



244 Faith and Immortality 

freedom will mean but different names for the same 
reality" 1 This seems to us to confound psychological 
possibility with moral necessity. If human freedom 
means anything it must mean the power to accept or 
reject the alternatives of moral choice; and if at any 
moment this possibility exists in the case of a particular 
soul, that -possibility must continue so long as that soul 
exists in freedom. To say therefore that the Divine 
persuasion must in the end be triumphant can never 
be more than a postulate of faith ; there is no necessity 
in the case. It is legitimate to hope that all will be 
well at last; it is illegitimate to affirm this hope as a 
certainty. 

What then becomes of the Sovereignty of the Divine 
will ? Is God liable to failure in the carrying out of His 
plans for the good of man ? Sovereignty is an ambig- 
uous word. It may mean the power to impose one's 
will victoriously on an enemy, and coerce him into con- 
sent by forcibly breaking his opposition. In this case 
there are no moral factors at work : might simply 
triumphs over weakness. Or it may mean the power 
of so using the energies of an unconquerably hostile will 
as to make them minister to the Divine purposes in spite 
of that hostility. This is the truly Christian sense of 
the word. It does not imply that God can ever force 
a soul into willing assent to His holy purpose, but that 
let all evil wills in the Universe do their worst, He will 
yet not fail to use that worst to fulfil His own purpose. 
The crowning illustration of this principle is seen in the 
way in which the evil forces that drove Jesus to the 
Cross and compassed His death were made to further, 
1 Immortality and the New Theodicy, pp. 102, 104. 



Theory of Final Restoration 245 

instead of defeating, His saving work ; their triumph was 
really their failure, while through His seeming failure He 
really attained His lasting victory. So it is legitimate 
to believe that God will ultimately triumph over all the 
evil forces of the Universe, or make them minister to 
His sovereign will of good. We may even go further 
and entertain the hope that this will ultimately involve 
the rescue of every created being from the dominance 
and love of evil. To go beyond that is to cross the line 
that for ever divides the mechanical or necessitarian 
order of reality from the moral, which must be for ever 
a realm of free relationships between God and man. 



II 

The Restorationist theory also fails to do justice to 
the nature of man as a free agent. 

Dr. Gordon posits two propositions, that men are " es- 
sentially and permanently reasonable beings," and that 
"man's irrationality is something that he has brought 
up with him from the animal world." 1 He is a being 
not made but in the making. On the one side he is the 
inheritor of brute instincts and passions that are no part 
of his inherent nature, but a legacy which it is his 
business to slough off that he may ultimately become 
purely human, which he can never fully be till he has 
linked himself in loving obedience to His Maker. This 
is profoundly true in essence, but the conclusion that 
lies implicit in Dr. Gordon's argument does not legiti- 
mately follow. For while the normal pathway of human 

1 Op. cit., pp. 100, 101. 



246 Faith and Immortality 

development is as suggested, the facts do not justify us 
in believing that the process is actually followed in the 
case of many men. The crucial fact in our nature is that 
we are placed in a strait between two alternative paths. 
On the one side there is that in us which is akin to the 
brute — a whole mass of desires and instincts that tend 
to drag us backward ; on the other, a hierarchy of moral 
possibilities in which these lower forces may be used for 
the evolution of our distinctive destiny as children of 
the Highest. The path of rationality and virtue is 
upward, the path of irrationality and sin is downward. 
It depends on the free action of the will which path 
each soul shall take. So strong is the downward pull 
of the "natural man" that the best men often cry out 
with Paul, "Who shall deliver me from this deadly 
body?" Nor are the unaided "resident" spiritual 
forces within us ever strong enough to ensure the vic- 
tory. But man on the highest side of his nature is in 
touch with Divine energies which lend themselves 
graciously to his need, and those who avail themselves 
of these are able to cry out triumphantly, "Thanks be 
to God, who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ 
our Lord." Now if man were practically, what he is 
ideally (rather than actually), a completely rational 
creature, he would not fail to avail himself of this Divine 
help to throw off the brute inheritance and rise into 
possession of his true humanity. We know, however, 
how hard it is to persuade men to do this. An enor- 
mous proportion decline to respond to the call : they 
are satisfied with a life of animality and self-seeking, 
which rejects or ignores the higher alternative without 
compunction. Others hover uncertainly all their lives 



Theory of Final Restoration 247 

between the two paths in a state of unstable moral 
equilibrium which in the end forfeits the prize of victory. 
In this life at least it is the few who whole-heartedly 
rise into a " newness of life " in which the spiritual pos- 
sibilities of our nature are realised. And if it be sug- 
gested that what the ministries of grace fail to accom- 
plish with so many in this life, will be attained by all 
in the life to come, this is a pure venture of faith for 
which there is no objective evidence. That many, or 
most, who have here been heavily weighted with con- 
genital tendencies, whose tyranny death may lighten by 
freeing them from the body, or who have had but a poor 
opportunity of overcoming the immense pressure of an 
unfavourable environment, or to whom the possibilities 
of the higher life have been imperfectly made known, 
may hereafter do so, we are permitted to hope ; but that 
all will do so there y when so many fail to rise to their 
call here under the most favourable circumstances, is an 
optimistic affirmation which has no basis outside the 
kindly imagination of those who persist in believing it 
in spite of many disquieting facts. 

One other point here. It is often suggested that this 
life being one of probation, and the future one of punish- 
ment for the wicked, we are justified in believing that 
under the stress of this discipline all the wicked will be 
redeemed. This position implies two assumptions : 
that the aim of Divine punishment is altogether reme- 
dial, and that it must ultimately be successful in its 
object. The first of these assumptions may be con- 
ceded without allowing the latter. There is punishment 
for sin in this world also, but however beneficent its 
aim, it often fails to attain its purpose. Men are often 



248 Faith and Immortality 

hardened by the consequences of sin, or they are 
weakened thereby into permanent discouragement. Its 
effects depend entirely on the temper in which they 
meet it. What is a " savour of life unto life " to one man, 
may be a " savour of death unto death " to another. We 
no longer think of God's judgments as vindictive or 
merely retributory; but are we justified in thinking that 
all who are made moral by this life's chastisements must 
necessarily alter their attitude in the Beyond ? There 
is no evidence for such a conclusion. 



Ill 

If we inquire into the teaching of Jesus we shall, we 
venture to think, find much to justify the above criti- 
cisms on the Restorationist position. 

We do not refer here to the particular passages attri- 
buted to Him which seem to suggest the doctrine of 
eternal punishment, the "everlasting fire," the "worm 
that never dieth," the "fire that is not quenched," the 
sin that shall "not be forgiven," etc. The idea that 
these expressions imply a probation limited to this life, 
and that in the other our sole function will be to reap 
the fruits of our earthly sowing, is purely traditional. 
They do not raise that question at all : they are sharply 
Apocalyptic in form and refer to particular ad hoc 
problems arising out of the conduct and attitude of His 
hearers to the Messianic message. It is only by elimin- 
ating this Apocalyptic element and extracting the 
spiritual principle left that we can realise the permanent 
lesson of these dread sayings. They then resolve them- 
selves into solemn warnings of the tremendous issues 






Theory of Final Restoration 249 

that depend on the neglect of moral opportunity, and 
the undying consequences of spiritual sloth and indif- 
ference. As such they strike the inevitable note, and 
raise no ethical problems. It is only when they are 
wrested from their context and interpreted as absolute 
statements, or as referring to the finality of death for all 
probation, that they plunge us into trouble and per- 
plexity. In any case we do not hold that they pre- 
clude the possibility of redemption for all in the life to 
come. 

At the same time it is not possible to infer any such 
theory as Universal Restoration from the words of 
Jesus, and certainly not from His practical bearing to 
those who heard Him. He nowhere deals with the sub- 
ject of probation after death : His whole care and 
solicitude is for living men, and His attitude ever and 
always is expressed in such words as the Apostle uses, 
"Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salva- 
tion." Two sharp and decided notes recur again and 
again in His teaching. First, life's opportunities are 
many and real, but they pass and do not recur; and 
secondly, evanescent as they are, they carry within 
them possibilities of precious and immortal gains, and 
liabilities of unending loss. Carpe diem! (in the 
noblest sense of that much abused term) is the perpetual 
note of His parables and appeals. "Life is just our 
chance of learning love" — that is the message of Jesus 
to the world; therefore neglect not the passing chances, 
the least of which may lead to issues of eternal life or 
death. 

Restorationists again dwell with emphasis on the 
saving purpose of Jesus, and find it hard to believe that 



250 Faith and Immortality 

it can possibly fail in the end. In taking up such a 
position they invest Him with the Divine significance 
which properly belongs to His person and message. 
But does the attitude of Jesus in any single incident of 
His life suggest that He shared this confidence? On 
the other hand, Universalist as He is in His appeals to 
men, His bearing towards all is one of tender and un- 
ending solicitude rather than of confidence as to their 
reception of His message. He proclaims the absolute 
willingness of the Father to save and bless them, and 
He pleads with them, persuades them, urges them by all 
the manifold wiles of a lov'ng eloquence to come "into 
the fold," to "enter into Kingdom," to "follow Him," 
to " take hold on Eternal life," etc. But there is always 
the implication that the ultimate issue depends on men, 
not on God, and that if they do not accept His invita- 
tion, there is no power on earth or in Heaven that can 
save them. Again, both the words and the experience 
suggest that it is not all men by any means, but rather 
(in this life at least) the few who do enter into relation 
of obedient fellowship with God, which means eternal 
life. " He came to His own, and His own received Him 
not," while on earth; and though after His resurrection 
a mightier spirit was sent forth from Him than could 
be centred in His physical presence, the same result was 
speedily manifested on a wider scale. The Gospel of 
the Epistles as truly as of the Synoptists is one that 
appeals to men, but never coerces them, nor do the 
writers ever give the slightest suggestion that the 
appeal will be finally successful with all. Rather they 
contemplate the prospect of an eternal loss or perdition 
for some men, owing to their hard and disobedient 



Theory of Final Restoration 251 

hearts. Hence the urgency of their appealing note, and 
the emphasis of their repeated warnings. We may say 
with Professor Salmond that all the Universalist sayings 
of the New Testament are " limited by the general New 
Testament doctrine that the actual effects of Christ's 
work are conditioned by the spiritual attitudes of 
men." 1 There is nothing irresistible even in the Cross 
of Christ, else, why do so many resist it ? " The awe 
of Christ's words and the urgency of the appeals of His 
Gospel to men lie precisely in this possibility that a love 
so absolute in its claims, so patient in its endeavour, so 
boundless in its resources, may yet be withstood to the 
end." 2 



IV 

We cannot, however, part from this idyllic, if 
fanciful, hypothesis concerning human destiny on 
this note of denial and rejection. If as a final theory 
Restorationism fails to substantiate itself in view of the 
fundamental facts of personality and of the general 
bearing of Scripture, it has not been empty or useless 
as a contribution towards our doctrine of the Last 
Things. It has succeeded in bringing about three most 
desirable results. 

1. For one thing it has succeeded in vindicating the 
character of God against the harsh and immoral doc- 
trine that the creature has no rights as regards His 
Maker. God, it was once believed, can do as He likes 
with His own, can either save or damn any soul He has 

1 The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 641. 

2 Ibid,, p. 649. 



252 Faith and Immortality 

made, and we have no right to call Him into account. 
Such was the Calvinist creed; and so far it was no 
Christian creed. It made salvation depend in the last 
resort on non-ethical (may we not say &/z-ethical ?) con- 
siderations. In so doing it removed the idea of God 
from all relation to human morality, by denying our 
right to argue from our natural sense of justice to the 
dealings of God towards men. John Stuart Mill's in- 
dictment 1 of this kind of theology will recur to many 
readers. Restorationism, by returning to Jesus' method 
of reasoning concerning God, 2 did a great service. It 
refused to believe that what would be wrong in a man 
(e.g., consigning an enemy to eternal torment) could be 
right in God, and so insisted on asking whether it was 
true that God could do such a thing; and in claiming 
that the testimony of our highest intuitions is a safe 
guide to a knowledge of God's method of dealing with 
us, it reinforced morality by Divine sanctions and 
endowed religion with a richer content. 

2. Collaterally, it helped to reopen the closed question 
of human probation. It forced men to ask themselves 
whether the doctrine could be considered Christian 
which limited all moral choices to this life. Once the 
question was asked, it was seen that such a position was 
confused, unjust and based on a pure assumption. 
People in general did not doubt it because it had always 
been taken for granted. If such a belief was implied in 
the Christian creed, it was a legacy from Judaistic 

1 Essays on Religion. 

3 " If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
your children, how much more will your Father which is in 
Heaven, give good things to them that ask Him?" (Matt, 
vii. 11). 



Theory of Final Restoration 253 

Eschatology, and taken over by the Christian Church 
without examination or question, till some of the finer 
thinkers began to open up the subject and to revolt 
against the current belief. Once raised, the problem 
could not be left permanently unsettled, but must be 
carried to some conclusion. Catholic theology in the 
Early Middle Ages modified it in so far as to formulate 
the doctrine of Purgatory; Protestant thought, with its 
literalistic and unhistoric notion of Scripture, relapsed 
into the earlier view; and we owe the Universalists a 
great debt for insisting on dealing faithfully with a 
dogma so unyielding, and a conception of God so hard 
and unethical. 

3. The Optimistic note in Restorationism, even though 
we may hold it to be carried too far, has done much to 
restore the balance of thought after the sombre outlook 
provided by the traditional theology. It filled the 
horizon beyond death with welcome light, as of the 
rising of the morning after the horrors of a nightmare- 
ridden night. It reintroduced us to the compassionate 
God of Jesus. It provided scope in the eternal world 
as well as here for the operation of grace and mercy and 
truth. It enabled us to think of the Saviour as work- 
ing in Eternity as once He did on earth to bring the 
wayward and the lost to the heavenly home prepared 
for them. All this was pure gain for Religion. And 
in the modified form of the Larger Hope, which refuses 
to despair altogether of anyone, least of all of God's 
pursuing and pardoning love, it has taken its place 
permanently as part of the Christian outlook on the 
future. Neander's wise words give a form of this faith 
to which most of us gladly bow : " The doctrine of a 



254 Faith and Immortality 

universal restitution does not stand in contradiction to 
the doctrine of eternal punishment, as it appears in the 
Gospels; for although those who are hardened in 
wickedness, left to the consequences of their conduct, 
their merited fate, have to expect endless unhappiness; 
yet a secret degree of the Divine compassion is not 
necessarily excluded by virtue of which, through the 
wisdom of God revealing itself in the discipline of free 
agents, they will be led to a free appropriation of 
redemption." 1 

1 History of the Planting of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 531 
(Bonn's translation). 



CHAPTER IV 
CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY 



" On that wonderful day 

When I am still on the bed, 
Smile through your weeping and say, 
f Gone by the upland way ! ' 

Do not say I am dead. 

Say I am done with the flowers, 

Blown no sooner than shed 
Under the trampling hours ; 
Tell of the windless bowers : 

Do not say I am dead. 

Say I am freed from the fires 

Heated seven times red, 
Heart that vainly aspires, 
Hunger of vain desires : 

Do not say I am dead. 

Speak of that life in the vast, 

Fresh from its Fountain and Head; 

Say : * 'Tis the dying is past ! ■ 

Say : * He is living at last ! ' 
Do not say I am dead." 

Wade Robinson. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY 

" Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we 
die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, 
we are the Lord's.' ' — Paul. 

THE theory of Universal Restoration for all, as well as 
that of Eternal Punishment for the wicked, assumes 
the natural or inherent immortality of the human soul. 
It does not contemplate the possibility of its extinction 
at any point of Time or Eternity. It is somewhat 
strange that this position has been so persistently taken 
for granted by the bulk of Christian thinkers. His- 
torically it may perhaps be traced back to the influence 
of Greek thinkers — of whom Plutarch says that "the 
idea of annihilation was intolerable to the Greek mind," 
and that " almost all, men and women both, would have 
surrendered themselves to the teeth of Cerberus, or the 
buckets of the Danaides, rather than to nonentity." 
But there is probably a deeper reason for this attitude, 
which is to be found in the instinctive belief of the soul 
in its own persistence — a belief that was raised into the 
dignity of a philosophical dogma by Plato, who taught 
the indestructibility of the human mind or soul, as 
having neither beginning nor end — a tenet passed on 
by him to the Neo-Platonists, whose influence was so 
paramount over the early Church. It has thus come 

257 17 



2$& Faith and Immortality 

about that the doctrine of annihilation, which is 
" logically the earliest, is historically the latest view." 1 

The natural immortality of the soul, however, has 
been challenged by individual writers from very early 
times. Some would carry this view as far back as 
Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp. The first writer, 
however, who speaks on this side with clear and em- 
phatic voice is Arnobius in the third century, since 
whose time sporadic adherents of the belief have ap- 
peared at long intervals. Faustus Socinus taught that 
man was naturally mortal, but was capable of attaining 
immortality by an act of grace. Among modern philo- 
sophers Hobbes and Locke propounded the theory of 
final annihilation after a period of punishment. But 
it was reserved for the last century to produce any large 
crop of writers who seriously and even aggressively 
advocated this theory of destiny. The list includes the 
well-known names of Archbishop Whately, Bishop 
Hampden, Edward White (whom Salmond 2 calls the 
"Coryphaeus of this school of thought"), J. B. Heard, 
Dr. R. W. Dale, Prebendaries Row and Constable, in 
this country; Professors Petavel-Oliff, Richard Rothe, 
Wendt, Secretan, Bruston, Sabatier, Kabisch, Kirn, 
Haering, and others, on the Continent; and L. C. 
Baker, L. W. Bacon, J. H. Pettingell, W. S. D. 
McConnell, and Lyman Abbott, in America. All 
these, while developing the argument on their own 
lines, are agreed on the fundamental principle that man 
is not immortal in virtue of his original constitution, 

1 Alger, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, 

P- 54- 
* Th* Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 594. 



Conditional Immortality 259 

but may be made immortal by an act of grace. They 
agree also in holding that while man is not immortal, 
all men survive death; some believing that there will 
be another chance for those who have not deliberately 
rejected the Gospel in this life; others, that the wicked 
will simply be punished before being destroyed. 



I 

It is difficult (and unnecessary) to collate in any 
detail the views of these various writers or to review 
the grounds on which they believe man to be mortal by 
nature. Most of them wrote before the historical view 
of the Bible was formulated, and some were hampered 
by the literalist view of Scripture which they shared 
with their contemporaries. Many of their exegetical 
arguments therefore have lost their cogency, though 
others remain in force. Our best plan will be to deal 
with the problem in general terms, making reference to 
the literature of the question only by way of illustration. 

In so far as the theory in question is based on Scrip- 
ture, we must bear in mind the many phases of thought 
represented in its various books. There is no consistent 
psychology of the spiritual nature of man in the Bible. 
As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the doctrine of 
Man among the Hebrews had a long and adventurous 
history. It was held at all times that death did not 
end existence for mankind; but it is doubtful whether 
the idea of unending existence as an inalienable attri- 
bute of the human soul was held by any of the Old 
Testament writers. It is unlikely that such an idea 
occurred to them at all. The battle of progressive 



260 Faith and Immortality 

religion was not with the idea of extinction, but with 
the primitive non-moral conception of Sheol as the dim 
abode of the dead, for good and bad alike. Natural 
death in the earlier stages of religious thought was 
held to involve separation of the soul from the body, 
from the land of the living, and from the presence of 
Jahweh. We have seen how slowly the idea of Sheol 
was moralised — i.e., made to fit in with the intuitive cry 
of the soul for the vindication of virtue and the punish- 
ment of sin in the after-life. Immortality as a religious 
conception — i.e., as a state where the ethical conse- 
quences of life on earth were brought to fruition — only 
became possible when the doctrine of God had reached 
its truly Theistic stage, and the general position of the 
later Old Testament and Apocalyptic writers was that 
while man's future existence was ensured in virtue of his 
psychological nature, his chance of a fully personal and 
spiritually satisfying life in the Beyond was dependent 
on the grace of God, and to be realised only in His 
loving favour. The wicked were miserable because 
banished from His vivifying and redeeming presence. 
So far, however, it is clear that the future state was con- 
ceived of as fixed and unalterable. There was no door 
from heaven to hell, or vice versa. As a man died so he 
continued; but whether the wicked continued for ever 
in unending torment, or were finally destroyed, was a 
problem which does not seem to have been clearly en- 
visaged at any time, though individual writers may be 
quoted in favour of either alternative. 

In New Testament times the background of belief as 
to the fate of the wicked was sombre and indefinite. 
Jesus uses the imagery of current beliefs as the frame- 






Conditional Immortality 261 

work of His parabolic teaching, but the framework must 
not — as we have seen — be identified with His own dis- 
tinctive message. What is original to Himself is not 
the Apocalyptic element in His teaching, but those 
ideas which are thrown into a "biological rather than 
an eschatological form," and which refer to the central 
facts and energies of the spiritual life. To these we 
shall presently return. Here the question is whether we 
can find any indication in His distinctive teaching of 
the immortal nature of the soul. Did He believe with 
the Pharisees in an unending punishment for the wicked, 
or, with the school of Hillel, that after a period of acute 
suffering, both body and soul were consumed ? The 
following extract from Dr. Winstanley's work on Jesus 
and the Future sums up the case from a cautious 
annihilationist point of view : " Mindful of the divergent 
views which were then held, and recalling the Jewish 
upbringing of the Incarnate Lord, we are inclined to 
believe that the final issue which was in prospect for 
the ungodly — after due cognisance of doom and ac- 
knowledgment of the justice of the Divine exclusion — 
was adumbrated in expressions like perishing, destruc- 
tion, loss of life, fire, Gehenna. Terrible as is the loss 
depicted by such terms, no authentic utterance of Jesus 
appears certainly to presuppose for the condemned 
unending suffering or even unending persistence. The 
expressions seem to have stood for a fate which — 
whether rapid or not as we measure time — we should 
designate annihilation or extinction. But the data are 
insufficient for a solution of the question — perhaps in- 
tentionally so, perhaps rather because of the unexpected 
immediateness of the answer to men's speculations on 



262 Faith and Immortality 

the subject of the near advent of the Kingdom itself." 1 
On the other hand, we have to bear in mind that in the 
time of our Lord the notion of man's immortality had 
become widespread if not universal, except among the 
Sadducees, who held the materialistic doctrine that 
death was the end of the body and soul alike. To quote 
Professor H. R. Mackintosh : " It is simple historical 
accuracy to say that the New Testament writers as- 
sumed the immortality of the soul; for them the exist- 
ence of the soul after death in bliss or woe was unend- 
ing. Some of the most recent exponents of Condition- 
alism virtually grant this by abandoning silently the 
effort to make out Scripture proof. By doing so, they 
get rid of an embarrassment ; on the other hand, it is a 
grave disadvantage to any theory to have against it 
the religious conviction of the Scripture as a whole." * 
We hold that in this deliverance Professor Mackintosh is 
nearer to the facts than Dr. Winstanley, whose hesitancy 
is clearly marked. Apart from theological considera- 
tions it is doubtful if interpreters of the text of the New 
Testament would ever have disagreed on this matter. 
The plain meaning of Scripture unmistakably tells in one 
way. Christianity, both in its Scriptural and historic 
form, presupposes the natural and inherent immortality 
of the human soul. 

II 

We pass to some of the difficulties of the Condi- 
tionalist position. 

1. All the writers of this school, while denying the 

1 Jesus and the Future, p. 316. 

3 Immortality and the Future, p. 222. 



Conditional Immortality 263 

immortal nature of the soul, assume its survival of 
bodily death. They agree at least in this with their 
opponents — that death does not end our existence. 
But such an assumption raises an initial difficulty. If 
man is mortal by nature, why should he be conceived of 
as surviving death at all ? Would not the logic of the 
case suggest that the natural term of our spiritual exist- 
ence coincided with the existence of body qua body? 
On such a supposition, two alternatives seem open to 
us : either to believe that men survive in order to have 
a further chance of redemption in another life, or that 
they do so simply for punitive purposes, as a make- 
weight for the fact that in this life the retributive punish- 
ment of sin is insufficient. This position implies that 
God must correct a flaw in the moral conditions of the 
present life by working a miracle at its close. In such 
a case " the impenitent do not rise qua men, for man as 
man is punishable ; they do not rise as believers, for they 
are not such; they rise, therefore, by an act of divine 
Omnipotence in order to receive the just reward of their 
deeds." 1 Those Conditionalists who deny future pro- 
bation are thus in a very unsatisfactory position, their 
theory of destiny, as a French writer puts it, " having all 
the inconveniences and none of the advantages of a 
compromise." It is doubtful if such a theory could win 
a permanent place in human belief. This objection, 
however, does not appear to us to apply equally to the 
alternative hypothesis that men survive death in order 
that they may enter on another term of probation, for 
this presents an adequate religious motive for a con- 

1 Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future, p. 227. 



264 Faith and Immortality 

tinued existence. This, however, is not what most 
advocates of Conditionalism contend for. Far more con- 
sonant with the revealed character of God, and with the 
facts of human nature would it be to hold that while 
man is naturally immortal, and possibly has another 
probationary chance hereafter, the finally impenitent, 
as soon as a certain state of fixity of evil character is 
attained, will be miraculously and mercifully put out 
of existence. There is an increasing number of Christian 
believers who appear to hold this view. And this view 
is sounder, both religiously and psychologically, than 
that which asserts punishment to be so destructive in 
its influence on character, that ultimate sinfulness must 
by an inevitable law destroy the soul that clings to it. 
To this the answer has been well made, that "character 
and personality or selfhood are not the same." So far 
as observation of this life is concerned, the worst forms 
of evil, which are most destructive in their influence on 
character, in no way impair the integrity of personality. 
The sinner is not less of a man than the saint ; he is only 
a different man. The old conception of the devil as the 
very incarnation of evil was of a vivid, resourceful being 
whose active powers of mischief were in direct propor- 
tion to his wholehearted wickedness. 

2. The Conditional theory emasculates and weakens 
the conception of personality. It relates man too 
organically with the brute, and ignores his distinctive 
features as a being above as well as within nature. 
Edward White speaks of death as the " breaking up of 
the human monad"; that "just as water is put an end 
to when the combining oxygen and hydrogen are 
separated," so "when the complex man is dissolved he 



Conditional Immortality 265 

is dead" 1 and disappears. In that case, his survival 
after death for any purpose is a miracle indeed : it is 
nothing less than a fresh act of creation ! All the 
higher intuitions of the soul — its vast scope for good or 
evil, its outreach into the immensities of moral and 
spiritual being, its instinctive intimations of immortality, 
its identification with a world of eternal values, its pas- 
sionate aspiration after a hierarchy of moral ideals, its 
scorn of death as a mere incident in a larger heritage 
of life, give the lie to this crude conception of his nature. 
" The notion of a soul immortal enough to live after 
death, but not immortal enough to live for ever, is too 
childish for anyone to believe beyond the little school 
of literalists who delight in it. The world outside will 
be content to believe that that which proves its powers 
to live through death claims its immortality." 2 Jesus 
at least did not make His approach to the soul on such 
a theory of human nature, but addressed man as a 
being of infinite potentialities for good and evil, weal 
or woe, both here and hereafter; the possessor of an 
awful freedom, and of an endless life; a personality so 
nearly akin to the Creator's that even in his sinful state 
he has qualities Divine enough to make it legitimate to 
argue from the ways of man to the ways of God (Matt, 
vii. 11); nay, a being so great and precious in the sight 
of God that the Incarnation and the Cross were not too 
great a price to pay for his redemption. The fact that 
" He took upon Himself not the nature of angels, but of 

1 Life in Christ, p. 106. This is a very loose and materialis- 
tic way of speaking of the soul. 

2 J. Baldwin Brown, The Doctrine of Annihilation in the 
Light of the Gospel of Love, p. 64. 



266 Faith and Immortality 

men," in His incarnation, proves human nature to be on 
a plane of dignity which could not belong to him were 
he a creature perishable as the brutes ; and the fact that 
Jesus died and rose again in our nature proclaims the 
grandeur of that nature in spite of the ruin that sin had 
made of it. Jesus indeed did not, according to the New 
Testament, create, but only "brought to light' 1 life and 
immortality, discovering man to himself, and setting his 
seal on our inherent passion for a life that never ends. 
On this position all the Apostolic writers build as on a 
sure foundation. It is the fountain-head of their vision 
of man, and sin, and destiny; it is the ground of their 
passionate willingness to spend and be spent for souls; 
it is the explanation of their earnest appeals for repent- 
ance, and of the horror with which they view the fate 
of the impenitent. The same note of urgency and 
solicitude is seen in the great Christian preachers and 
thinkers of all subsequent ages. When for any reason 
that note goes, we may be sure that something distinc- 
tive of the Christian faith disappears. 

Ill 

A fresh development of the Conditionalist theory of 
future destiny has taken place since the rise of evolu- 
tionary science and philosophy, and has recently had 
an increasing vogue in Germany. This has recently 
been well expounded by Dr. W. S. D. McConnell in his 
interesting volume, The Evolution of Immortality. 
There is here so much that meets the conditions of 
current thought that it is worthy of somewhat detailed 
treatment. 



Conditional Immortality 267 

Dr. McConnelPs argument is based on strictly bio- 
logical grounds. "It is a biological process we are 
seeking to trace, and a biological classification we 
attempt to discover. It may be that the biological 
classification we are in search of may turn out to be a 
religious one. . . . What we maintain is that if any 
human life becomes capable of passing on to another 
life with personality intact, it will be because such a life 
has already reached such a state of spiritual fixedness 
and stability which will make survival 'realisable* and 
destruction 'unnatural* to it, and that such an achieve- 
ment, if reached at all, must be by an extension of the 
long path by which the soul has climbed up from the 
primordial slime." 1 

This evolution of a soul capable of surviving its 
physical organism is, according to this theory, the last 
great achievement of the upward push of life. All 
through the lower orders and up to this point every- 
thing is sacrificed to the continuance of life in the 
species. The individual is valuable only as a link in 
a chain, as a chalice to carry and pass on to another 
generation the precious wine of vitality; once this has 
been done, his biological function is fulfilled, and he 
begins to die. Now if individual immortality is to 
become law, nothing less is necessary than a reversal of 
this elemental law. It is clear that that can only be 
reached if an individual be found who is intrinsically 
stronger than his species. " Up to this point, life sweeps 
round everlastingly in a closed circle, from seed through 
plant to seed again, and so about continually. If escape 
from it be ever possible it must be at a tangent, and by 

1 Evolution of Immortality, p. 85. 



268 Faith and Immortality 

some kind of individual whose life orbit sweeps far 
away enough from its material centre to be caught in 
some mighty attraction from beyond." 1 

The upward movement of life thus arrives at last 
at the point of producing an individual who has 
broken the entail of mortality. When was this 
point reached ? It has been reached at least in some 
men. Dr. McConnell does not hold that man is neces- 
sarily immortal, but he affirms his immortability. He 
denies the essential difference between the human soul 
per se and the animal soul, but claims that the former at 
least has in it a principle in virtue of which it is cap- 
able of acquiring the property of survival and possibly 
of an endless existence in another state. All men, how- 
ever, are not capable of this great leap from mortality to 
immortality, and not all men who are thus capable of it 
actually attain to it. Nor would he confidently affirm 
that man alone of earthly creatures is possessed of this 
quality. "The simple fact is that in the attempt to 
trace the origin, development, and destiny of the soul, 
the materialist classification of 'man* and 'animal' must 
be disregarded. In advance one dare not say where 
the line between immortal and mortal creatures will be 
found. It may conceivably coincide with the one which 
marks off Genus Homo, Class Mammalia, Order Pri- 
mates, or may be found to run below that, so as to include 
many of maris humble kinsmen. Or it may be found 
necessary to settle upon a line running irregularly 
through and amidst the ranks of man. ... // may 
turn out that all whom we call men are not man? 2 He 

1 Evolution of Immortality, pp. 89-90. 

2 Ibid., p. 52. The italics are ours. 



Conditional Immortality 269 

contrasts the low psychical capacities of the Bushmen, 
Hottentots, and Pygmies of Africa, with those of the 
higher brutes, and claims that "measured by psychic 
standards, the interval between the lowest man and the 
highest is a hundredfold greater than between the lowest 
man and the highest brute." 1 "What we are seeking is 
a spiritual organism which would be at once worth 
keeping permanently in existence, and which has been 
sufficiently developed to cohere through and after the 
shock of the dissolution of its physical basis." 2 When 
and where is such an individual to be found ? 

It is found where the moral nature has so developed 
and asserted the mastery that it has triumphed over the 
merely psychical and animal nature. It is not enough 
to have a potential faculty for goodness, for brutes have 
that (?), nor will the actual manifestation of a rudi- 
mentary ethical sense suffice, " but only a moral structure 
developed far enough to take command over the 
turbulent appetites and errant thoughts will serve the 
end. . . ." " The place of escape from the closed ring 
of what we call nature is not the body nor the mind, but 
the conscience," 3 and a conscience, we may add, which 
has come to such maturity that it carries the soul into 
assured sovereignty over the vagrant, self-regarding 
tyranny of the "natural" man. The secret of eternal 
life lies in a spiritually vitalised moral sense. This is 
the strait gate, this is the narrow way that leadeth to 
life. 

Our author now turns to the teaching and Person of 
Christ, and in both directions he finds a startling corro- 

1 Evolution of Immortality, p. 53. 2 Ibid., p. 54. 

3 Ibid., pp. 99, 100. 



270 Faith and Immortality 

boration of his position. As regards the former he 
sharply distinguishes between the Apocalyptic form 
into which much of the teaching is thrown, and the 
essential message. This is found in a series of utter- 
ances which, when brought together, resolve themselves 
into a treatise on life and death. The real question with 
Jesus is not of rewards and punishments, but of living 
or perishing. "The Gospels are biological altogether" 
— at least in their images. Jesus begins by stating the 
situation in terms which the zoologist knows to be true 
of life at every stage. " Enter ye in at the strait gate, 
for wide the gate and broad the way that leadeth to 
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat : 
because strait is the gate and narrow the way that 
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. . . . He 
that hath My word and believeth on Him that sent Me 
hath everlasting life, and shall not pass to catastrophe, 
but hath passed out of death into life. . . . That 
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is 
born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised, there- 
fore, when I say unto you that, except a man be born 
from above, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. . . . 
So as the Father quickeneth the dead, and maketh them 
living, so the Son quickeneth whom He will. ... I 
declare unto you that if a man keep my sayings he shall 
never see death," 1 etc. "The revelation of Jesus was 
thus a revelation of possible life." He makes the appeal 
to the instinct of living the strongest and most persistent 
in our nature. "If you devote your energies to build- 
ing up your lower life, you will lose everything, because 
it comes to an end, but if you disregard it in the interests 

1 Evolution of Immortality, pp. 110-112. 



Conditional Immortality 271 

of the eternal Gospel of goodness, you will find an 
aeonian life. What is this but the enunciation of the last 
term of the long series of Organic Evolution ? And is 
it not supremely trustworthy as being the dictum of the 
final personality who came Himself only in the ' fulness 
of time'?" 1 

When we turn from the teaching to the person of 
Christ and follow His career, we find, according to Dr. 
McConnell, a unique illustration of the truth of that 
teaching. For he stands out in history as at once the 
supreme instance of a perfectly holy personality, and 
as the one who in virtue of what he was triumphed 
manifestly over physical death. The story of the resur- 
rection of Jesus as the crown and vindication of his life 
is the essential element of the Christian Gospel. It was 
as a Gospel of resurrection that He "was thus first 
preached." "This was the good news, because first of 
all it was all news." This was the preaching of the 
Apostles, that in the Person of Jesus "life and immortal- 
ity were brought to light." "Their argument was that 
the man Jesus had definitely realised the process 
whereby a natural human being might attain to the 
possession of a life so exalted in quality and so tena- 
cious in substance that corporal death could not break 
it down : that He had achieved it for Himself at in- 
calculable cost ; that He had passed through death and 
conquered it, having shown himself to be alive ' by many 
infallible proofs'; and that in this He had become a 
kind of first fruits of a human harvest which might be 
great or small as the event should prove." 2 "Thus, to 
sum all up, the Gospel contained in the resurrection of 

1 Evolution of Immortality, p. 113. * Ibid., p. 154. 



272 Faith and Immortality 

Christ is the last term in an evolutionary process which 
began with the Eternal chaos and reaches its culmina- 
tion in the man become immortal. . . . This way is the 
'Way of Life' from the protoplasmic slime to the Son 
of Man!" 1 

IV 

1. This new version of the Conditionalist theory, 
while it contains a great truth, is, in the first place, a 
signal instance of the fallacy of attempting to reason 
from a striking analogy to a logical conclusion. Our 
suspicions are aroused at the outset by the open claim 
of the author that "it is a biological process we are 
seeking to trace," which in the end may prove to be 
a religious one." This book belongs to the fascinating 
but perilous style of literature of which Professor Henry 
Drummond's book, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
is a classic instance. Biology is not theology, though it 
often furnishes very striking religious analogies. The 
laws of physical life cannot be applied to the soul as 
though spiritual processes were but a continuation in 
another sphere of the vital processes that go on in the 
body. Each stage and grade of reality has its own 
laws, and while each is interwoven and dovetailed into 
the next below it, the categories of the lower do not 
necessarily (if at all) apply to the higher. And though 
there is continuity of a kind from the lowest organisms 
to the highest, the latter are hemmed in by limitations 
from which the former have escaped. The higher we 
go, the less does the principle of analogy help us, and 
the oftener it proves delusive and perilous. 
1 Evolution of Immortality , p. 154. 



Conditional Immortality 273 

2. Dr. McConnelPs refusal to accept the usual classi- 
fication which recognises the uniqueness of man among 
earthly creatures is not likely to find much acceptance. 
True, there are wide psychological differences between 
one race and another, which differ as much in mental 
calibre as in physical stature; but these differences are 
equally striking between the lowest and highest speci- 
mens of any race. This does not in the least obliterate 
the unbridgable chasm between the lowest men and the 
highest animals. Fully allowing for all the congenital 
differences between man and man, and race and race, 
there is always the possibility of physical intermixture, 
of intellectual understanding, and of spiritual fellow- 
ship, between men the wide world over. It is environ- 
ment, early training, varying standards of education 
and caste, and not generic distinctions, which divide 
them into such contrasted groups, social and national. 
Man is man everywhere and always ; wherever found he 
has in him, latent or patent, the capacity for moral con- 
duct, self-conscious freedom, and religious aspiration, 
these being the essential marks of personality and the 
foretokens of immortality. 

3. Dr. McConnell's theological positions are equally 
untrustworthy. Take only one instance. In his inter- 
pretation of the teaching of Jesus he falls into the 
obvious fallacy of identifying His use of the words " life," 
"death," "destruction," "perishing," with the merely 
physical, biological sense of these very ambiguous words. 
This vitiates the whole argument drawn from this source. 
For not to Jesus only, but to all the New Testament 
(and some of the Old Testament) writers, these words 
stood not for physical but for moral realities. Life was 

18 



274 Faith and Immortality 

not existence per se, but life in God and for God ; death 
was not the cessation of being, but existence apart from 
fellowship with God, or under His disfavour and wrath. 
It is simply not true (as we have already seen) that 
Jesus, nor yet His contemporaries (with the exception of 
the Sadducean school), believed that physical death 
ended human existence for either good or bad men. 
Such key words as "perdition," "loss," "destruction," 
"perishing," "eternal life," "immortality" — these stood 
for qualitative and intensive, not merely factual and 
extensive ideas. Thus when, in the fourth Gospel, 
Jesus is credited with saying, "He that heareth My 
word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath ever- 
lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but 
is passed from death unto life"; and "He that keepeth 
My sayings, he shall never see death," He is clearly 
speaking not of a physical fact but of a spiritual condi- 
tion. Unquestionably both Jesus and the Apostles 
often spoke of physical death in the usual sense, 1 but 
their distinctive use of the word always connoted this 
higher sense. Everywhere and always for them true 
life was more than existence, death was other than 
merely physical dissolution. Life without fellowship 
with God as its quickening and nourishing matrix was 
a state of death; while physical death "in Him" was 
an entrance into a fuller and ampler life. While an 
after-existence was ensured to all, whatever their spiritual 
state, "immortality" or "eternal life" was the preroga- 
tive or reward of those only who in this life were joined 
to the Living God in loving obedience through Jesus 

1 Cf. John xi. 4, 25, xxi. 23; Matt. x. 21, xx. 28, xxvi. 38; 
Rom. viii. 38; Phil. i. 20; Rev. ii. 10; etc. 



Conditional Immortality 275 

Christ their Lord. No merely biological terms will 
express such realities as these, however captivating the 
analogies suggested by them, and however consonant 
they may happen to be with prevailing lines of thought 
in the present day. It is through the poverty of human 
language, with its resultant confusion of thought, that 
such specious fallacies of inference are possible. 

4. This theory of human nature as being in a state 
of transition from the merely animal to the truly human 
would, if substantiated, introduce an element of uncer- 
tainty in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures which 
might have disastrous consequences. Since there would 
be no outward signs to differentiate those who had at- 
tained to the possession of an undying nature, no man 
would know of his neighbour whether he was addressing 
a fellow-immortal or a being as perishable as one of his 
domestic animals. As it has been well put, " There is 
no escaping the dilemma : either man is made for im- 
mortality — he is moral by constitution, and therefore in- 
trinsically a member, good or bad, of the abiding moral 
world which has God for its abiding centre — or he is 
not made for immortality : change and decay are his 
nature; apart from Christ he is, in point of fact, as 
perishable as the beasts. He is an intelligent animal 
which may become a child of God; but taking him in 
his unregenerate condition, there is no appreciable sense 
in which he is God's child. ... A view which thus in- 
trudes the notion of caste into the human family puts 
the sense of brother in danger. . . . The man who 
adopts the Conditionalist position with serious convic- 
tion, regarding it as no longer an hypothesis, but an in- 
dubitable certainty, must feel it hard to maintain his 



276 Faith and Immortality 

sense of the greatness of the soul — -not this soul or that, 
but all souls. Belief in annihilation, therefore, can be 
tolerable only to a lover of the race if the very thought of 
its particular application is kept away. In evangelism, at 
all events, we must operate with some other view." 1 If 
we are to preach the Gospel with confidence and effect 
to every creature (Mark xvi. 15) it can only be by ignor- 
ing such an illimitable distinction between one being 
and another, and by taking for granted, were it but for 
the sake of the argument, that every hearer possesses 
an immortal soul. How true all this is may be clearly 
seen in view of Dr. McConnelPs frank but unguarded 
confession : " As one wanders observantly and thought- 
fully amongst the crowds which teem in the purlieus of 
a great Christian city, as he watches their faces, listens 
to their meagre speech, penetrates to the interior of their 
shallow lives, realises their brutality and mischievous- 
ness and cunning intelligence, becomes familiar with 
their desires and ideals of life, above all, as he sees 
their looks of blank insensibility to any moral appeal, 
he is hard put to it not to ask himself, t Are these really 
human ?' I confess frankly that when I have tried to 
speak to certain kinds of men ' of righteousness and of 
judgment to come/ I have felt the effort was little less 
vain than would have been the same exhortation to my 
dog." 2 Any theory which, when consistently followed 
out, thus brings paralysis on the religious appeal may 
conceivably be biologically true, but it is certainly not true 
to the Evangelic conception of man from the Christian 
standpoint. It thus stands religiously self-condemned. 

1 H. R. Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future, pp. 223, 224. 
* Evolution of Immortality, pp. 100-104. 



Conditional Immortality 277 



While, however, we are unable to assent to the Con- 
ditionalist theory, whether on Scriptural, scientific, or 
philosophic grounds, the school of thought which has 
advocated it has — like the Universalist — done good 
service in the interest of faith; and there is a modified 
form of it which in our judgment is defensible even 
from the Christian standpoint, to which we shall recur 
in the next chapter. 

In common with the Universalist school, the Condi- 
tionalists have done much to raise and press home the 
question whether the traditional theory is right in 
affirming the restriction of probation to this life, the 
next being a state of retribution or reward for all men 
to all eternity. 

Historically, this problem was never raised to any 
effect till these two types of thinker insisted on envisag- 
ing it with clearness and determination. The motive 
for both theories was thus a profoundly religious one, 
and as such they are entitled to respect and considera- 
tion. Both agree on the central doctrine of the faith — 
the infinite holiness and boundless love of God for all 
His creatures; but they differ profoundly in their doc- 
trine of man : the one assumed his natural immortality, 
the other his natural mortality, but his " immortability " 
or potential immortality. We hold that in their doc- 
trine of God they are both right; and in their doctrine 
of man, both wrong, though in different directions. The 
Universalist and the Conditionalist consider it un- 
thinkable that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ should condemn even unrepentant men, however 



278 Faith and Immortality 

wicked, to everlasting torment after the brief, contingent, 
and uncertain probationary chances of this life, without 
taking into just account the infinite differences of 
spiritual condition between them, or giving them an 
opportunity to reverse their earthly attitude in the life 
to come. The Universalist, assuming the essential 
mortality of the soul, but limiting its possibilities of for 
ever rejecting the pressure of the divine appeal, finds his 
solution in the sure triumph of divine grace over the 
opposition of the human will, thus in effect safe-guard- 
ing the final issue at the expense of ultimate moral 
freedom. The Conditionalist questions the essential 
immortality of the soul on various grounds (here joining 
hand with the conclusions of naturalistic science), but 
holds man to be " immortable," or capable of eternal life 
through the grace of God. Whether we agree with 
either or neither, it is a great benefit to religious thought 
that this question has — for the first time in the history 
of the Church — been forced into notice and faced with 
a serious intention of going to the root of the matter. 
It can never again be relegated to the background, 
without supreme and disabling loss to faith. Nor is it 
likely that an attitude even of "reverent agnosticism" 
as to the fate of the wicked will ever permanently satisfy 
the Christian mind. However tentative and modest 
our attitude may be, we surely have enough to go upon 
in the revelation of God and man given in the Gospel 
and in the known facts of human nature and of the 
conditions of our earthly life, to enable us to come to a 
working hypothesis regarding future destiny. Dog- 
matism is here entirely out of count, for the factors of 
the problem stretch dimly on one side into the Unseen, 



Conditional Immortality 279 

and are not within our purview ; but every man, accord- 
ing to his lights is called upon reverently to face the 
issue as best he may. And it is pre-eminently the duty 
of every Christian preacher and teacher to do his utmost 
to know the mind of God on this supremely important 
matter. The present paralysis that has fallen on the 
preaching of the Christian Gospel is largely due to the 
failure of the Church of Christ (which has, as we believe, 
unconsciously, if not consciously, given up the tradi- 
tional faith concerning the Last Things) to formulate 
and to preach any theory at all concerning them. What 
fills the Gospels and the Epistles with such vivid lights 
and shadows, and rings through them with such stern 
insistence — the issues of life and death and eternity — 
cannot, we may be sure, be left out of the Christian mes- 
sage without incalculable harm and mischief. And so, 
having brought our readers to this stage of our argu- 
ment, we will venture in the next chapter to summarise 
the conclusions to which, in our judgment, it naturally 
points. We do so in the hope that whether it com- 
mends itself to them as final or not, it will at least help 
to clear the ground for a considered judgment of their 
own. 



CHAPTER V 
A CONSTRUCTIVE VIEW 



" It is not the assurance of a mere metaphysical immortality 
that Christ has created. It is the assurance of eternal life. 
His gift to men is not the inculcation of the truth of an endless 
existence, not any dogma of the soul's deathless perpetuity, but 
the revelation of a higher life, and the inspiration of a hope 
stronger than all speculation, sacredly governing conduct, and 
accessible to the humblest soul. . . . The certainties of being, 
the light of eternity, the completions of the future, the achieved 
ideal of the Divine Kingdom, the recompense of service, the 
vision of God, the pleasures at His right hand, are the primary 
and immediate purpose of His teaching. Life, eternal Life, 
the great reward, the kingdom, the existence like the angels, 
the inheritance, the throne, the glory, the joy of the Lord, the 
place prepared, the Father's House — this is that of which His 
words, whether of hope or of awe, are meant to give assur- 
ance." — Salmond : The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 
PP- 393 > 394- 



CHAPTER V 

A CONSTRUCTIVE VIEW 

" He did God's Will; to him, all one 
If on the earth, or in the sun." 

The Boy and the Angel. 

THE reader will by this time probably have divined 
something of the position taken up by the writer 
on the problem of Future Destiny. It remains for us to 
gather up the threads of the argument, and put the con- 
clusion before him as clearly as possible. 

I 

We hold that Man is by nature immortal. He was 
not made to die. Formed in the image of God — a com- 
plete moral personality at least potentially — he shares 
in the deathlessness of his Maker. The great change 
which makes an end to the body has not power to lay 
a withering hand on the soul. That goes on, in an- 
other life, to achieve its spiritual destiny under other 
conditions, and in an environment where moral issues 
will probably be plainer and less confused than here. 

To such a creature this life is essentially one of pro- 
bation or trial — the first stage of our moral and spiritual 
testing, but not the last. This does not mean that it 
cannot be called a state of education or development 

283 



284 Faith and Immortality 

equally well; but in virtue of the perpetual ethical 
choices presented to us in this life, the word probation 
does represent what to us seems the central fact for us 
all. But the probation of all men, while real, is not on 
a plane of equality for all, since the opportunities for 
coming to know the supreme issues of life and death, 
and to be tried knowingly against the highest conceiv- 
able ideal standard of character are given to the few, 
and not the many, in this life. If the Christian revela- 
tion of God be true and final, we hold that there must 
be a continuance of this process of probation and trial in 
the life to come, for all at least who have not here 
reached their permanent spiritual attitude in relation to 
the Great Alternative. It is indeed difficult to conceive 
of a creature, whose inmost nature is concerned with 
ethical choices, that any state in which it can find itself 
here or hereafter is not in a true sense a state of "pro- 
bation." Heaven itself must in a sense be a sphere of 
choices between this and that, between a higher and a 
lower alternative; and can even Hell be anything else? 
True, there is such a thing as a final determination 
towards certain alternatives; the growth of character 
indeed implies that the will is continually changing its 
venue of choices from one standard of values to another. 
At the same time, though we may have settled our 
general attitude towards the supreme realities of the 
moral world, we must still be called upon to reach up to 
unattained stages of goodness, and win a higher place 
in the ascending possibilities of holiness; and this can 
be done only through acts of choice. Contrariwise, if 
a permanent Hell be a reality, there would be ever 
deeper depths into which the wicked could descend, if 



A Constructive View 285 

they do not at some stage of the descent break away 
from the gravitation of evil, and rise by force of will or 
power of grace into the attractions of the Upward Way. 



II 

The great problem is whether in the Future Life such 
a possibility of betterment exists for all. We hold that 
from the Godward side there can never be any bar to 
this possibility. We cannot for ourselves conceive it 
credible that the God revealed and incarnated in Jesus 
will ever refuse to receive back the worst and most aban- 
doned soul, whether on earth or in nethermost Hell; 
nay, we can as little conceive it possible that He should 
ever cease to bring to bear on such a soul the full minis- 
tries of His grace and love. However we may inter- 
pret that mysterious reference to the descent of Jesus 
into the world of "spirits in prison" (1 Pet. hi. 19), or 
the fact that He "preached the Gospel to the dead" 
(ibid. iv. 6) during those three days of His sojourn 
in the Unseen, whence He came back to His sorrowing 
disciples with the reassuring words on His lips, "All 
hail !" it must at least have meant that Peter, who knew 
and loved his Master so well, believed in the power of 
that Gospel to reach even to the dead. This, indeed, is 
but a faint ray of light on the darkness that shrouds the 
Beyond from our vision, but it is enough to open the 
door of hope : and hope is but an incipient faith. 

On the other hand, we cannot share with the Univer- 
salists their confident assurance that in the end> and at 
long last, there is the same assurance on the manward side 
that all souls, however abandoned and sinful here, will 



286 Faith and Immortality 

ultimately turn to God, and accept His merciful and re- 
newing grace in the other life. We dare not ignore the 
solemn and terrible words of judgment with which our 
Lord pronounces the doom of the lost; we dare not 
affirm that all those who have descended into evil 
beyond a certain point are ever likely to reverse their 
choice. All the evidence we have (whether we draw it 
from experience or observation in this life, or whether 
we consider the attitude of those who rejected Him 
knowingly and finally while on earth, or whether we 
deal with the moral probabilities of the case) suggests 
that men do sometimes take a final attitude towards the 
alternatives of good and evil even in this life. There 
are men of whom it seems impossible not to say that 
"being past feeling, they have given themselves over to 
lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness," 
and who appear to be beyond any and every appeal to 
repent. And if it is so here, have we any adequate 
ground for believing it to be otherwise in the Hereafter ? 
We cannot, of course, speak with anything like cer- 
tainty. It may be that by some miracle of grace, man's 
will joined with God's will, every lost soul will volun- 
tarily turn back to God ultimately. All we would plead 
for is that the possibility, if not the probability, is the 
other way. 

Ill 

Of the great family of human souls who pass into 
death "unsaved" it cannot, however, be said that they 
have reached any finality of attitude towards right and 
wrong in this life. Most men when they die are in a 
thoroughly undeveloped spiritual state. This is obvi- 



A Constructive View 287 

ously true of all children and of most young people who 
die before their time, but it may with equal truth be 
predicted of enormous numbers of people at any and 
every stage of their earthly life. Many, again, have 
never had a fair moral chance during their brief and 
sorrowful sojourn in this life; the very light of con- 
science that is in them is little better than darkness; 
laden with congenital disabilities, pent up in narrow 
and alien circumstances, surrounded by a ghastly en- 
vironment of perpetual and disabling temptation, denied 
all opportunities of enlightenment and betterment — are 
these poor waifs and strays of humanity to be doomed 
and damned to everlasting perdition because they have 
never had the advantages of others more fortunate ? It 
is little easement to our solicitude for these our poor 
brothers and sisters to say of them that they will be 
"judged according to their light," for they have had no 
adequate light at all. It is to our mind inconceivable 
that any final judgment whatever should be passed on 
souls who have been under such disabling moral condi- 
tions from birth to death. Many of these under happier 
circumstances would have risen to their opportunities. 
Dr. Barnardo once told the writer that of the multitude 
of waifs and strays rescued by him and passed through 
the Christian discipline of his Homes — a multitude for 
the most part drawn from that class of which Robert 
South long ago said that they had been "not so much 
born as damned into the world" — only two per cent, 
ever found their way in after-life into the grasp of the 
criminal law, and that the vast majority grew to be 
clean-living Christian men and women. So doubtless 
would multitudes of their less fortunate fellows whom no 



288 Faith and Immortality 

one has rescued from their evil environment. Are we 
to think of these that the chance they never had here 
will be denied to them also Hereafter ? If Divine judg- 
ment is passed on such, it will surely only be after the 
full light of the Gospel of holiness, love, and grace, has 
shone upon them in another life. Judgment loses its 
meaning if it does not deal with real moral issues, and 
these we cannot arrive at till we come to a certain stage 
of enlightenment. It is before the "judgment-seat of 
Christ" that all men will have at last to appear, and 
though those who have known Him here will have to 
give account of the deeds done in the body, whether 
they be good or bad, those who have not known Him 
while in the body cannot have that supreme standard 
applied to them, but must be judged by what they shall 
know of Him, and by what they will do with His claims, 
in the life to come. 

But even to have heard of Christ is not always to 
have known Him for what He is — the moral touchstone, 
as well as the Saviour, of the human soul. There are 
probably millions of people in this favoured land who 
have never been brought effectually face to face with 
His sovereign claims on their allegiance. Yet are they 
not given over hopelessly to evil; there is often more 
goodness than badness in them; they have simply not 
arrived at the spiritual majority. Probably the chap- 
lains at the Front have the best possible chance of see- 
ing deeply into the heart of the young manhood of 
Britain, facing together as they do day by day the 
imminent realities of life and death. And their con- 
sistent testimony concerning our soldiers is that the vast 
majority of them (as an Army chaplain recently ex- 



A Constructive View 289 

pressed it to the writer) "are unsaved, but salvable." 
These are the men who are dying daily for us in their 
thousands. " Unsaved but salvable " — that is their con- 
dition ; yet are they hurried out of life with the consent 
and on behalf of us all into the other world. Does not 
the fact that we allow this sacrifice without protest or, 
indeed, any deep solicitude — unless it be for one here 
and there of them who is personally near and dear to 
us — show that we do not really believe that the chances 
of this life are ended for them at death, but that beyond 
the grave these souls will be offered the opportunity to 
complete their earthly probation and come to the great 
hour of decision that comes to many of us here and now ? 



IV 

But what of the finally unrepentant — if any such re- 
main after all the Divine disciplines and opportunities 
of betterment that may be accorded to them hereafter ? 
Are they to be doomed — self-doomed, that is — to end- 
less reaping of the evil seed they have sown ? Or will 
they by an inevitable law pass into nonentity ? Or will 
they by a Divine and merciful fiat be deprived of the 
existence whose opportunities they have so flagrantly 
abused ? 

Here the curtain descends on all clear spiritual vision. 
No voice has spoken to us concerning that far and yet 
— to many of us — urgent question. No clear ray of 
light has ever lit up the gloom in which the fate of 
those who, in their unconstrained exercise of the glor- 
ious, yet awful, prerogative of freedom, identify them- 

19 



290 Faith and Immortality 

selves indissolubly with evil. Reason falters in this dim 
region of uncertainty and surmise. Nevertheless, in our 
judgment, we are justified in reverently throwing out 
a few tentative thoughts. 

1. It seems to us no longer possible to hold to the 
traditional view that there will be an eternity of woe for 
anyone in a universe created by a God of Holy Love. 
However self-chosen such a fate, and therefore deserved, 
it would form an intolerable blot on the final consum- 
mation of all things. It used to be taught that part of 
the blessedness of the redeemed would be to watch the 
tortures of the damned writhing in eternal fires of tor- 
ment. That would be to turn Heaven itself into a Hell. 
We could not speak of those in any true sense as 
"saved" who could thus delight in the wretchedness 
of their fellow-creatures. Rather would we say that so 
long as a single soul remained in the universe unre- 
deemed and unblessed, there could be no perfect Heaven 
for God or Man. 1 

1 It is sometimes good to turn away from such travesties of 
the Christian standpoint to the intuitions of heathen writers, 
untrammelled by the hard limitations of dogma. There is a 
picture, for instance, in a Buddhist temple in China represent- 
ing the story of the priest Lo Puh, who on passing the gate of 
death saw his mother Yin Teh in Hell. He instantly descended 
into the infernal court where she was suffering, and by his 
valour, virtues, and intercessions, rescued her. An old com- 
mentary of the Koran says a Mohammedan priest was once 
asked how the blessed in Paradise could be happy when missing 
some near relative or friend whom they were forced to believe 
to be in Hell. He replied, " God will either cause men to for- 
get such persons, or else to rest in expectation of their com- 
ing " (Alger's Doctrine of a Future State , pp. 569, 570). Our 
Lord represents Dives in torment agonising over the possible 
fate of his five brothers who are still on earth. So that seem- 



A Constructive View 291 

2. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any- 
thing in the nature of sin and of its effects on the soul 
to suggest that it has the power to destroy existence as 
well as character and felicity. As already hinted, evil 
men are still integral personalities, and are often full of 
a vivid though perverted vitality. The deeper a man sinks 
under the dominance of wrong-doing, the more power- 
ful his will, the clearer his brain, the more intense his 
sensibilities often are. Those who argue from the fact 
that creatures out of harmony with their earthly en- 
vironment tend to die out, to the inference that souls 
who have lost spiritual touch with the Divine life must 
in the end fade into nonentity, are following a one-sided 
analogy to a false conclusion. It would be just as 
cogent (and futile) to argue from the fact that parasites, 
who batten on the juices and tissues of higher organ- 
isms, are often more fat and flourishing than their 
victims, to the conclusion that souls who misuse their 
privileges, and grow rich on the poverty of better men, 
win thereby a firmer and surer place in the hierarchy 
of moral existence. These analogies are irrelevant to 
the issue. The Apostle speaks of men " abiding " in 
" death " (1 John iii. 14), as of others " abiding " in "life/ 1 
where "death" and "life" mean a state of spiritual 
alienation from, or fellowship with, God. We have no 
grounds whatever, therefore, for believing that sin will 
finally destroy its victims in the sense that it will sap 
the very fountain of their existence. 

ingly even in Hell there may be awakened something like an 
altruistic spirit! Is there not an authentic ray of hope here 
even for the lost? Torments thus disciplinary do not strike a 
note of despair. 



292 Faith and Immortality 

3. Our hope, here, as ever, is in God, not in man. It 
is permissible, in other words, to believe, however trem- 
blingly, that He who gave us being in order that we 
might through His grace " win our souls," and so gain 
eternal felicity, will not permit any of His creatures to 
exist for ever in active opposition to His will, and so in 
misery, but will, when it is clear to His all-seeing eye 
that the final step has been taken in the identification 
of any soul with evil, " destroy both body and soul in 
Hell." Jesus speaks of God as being " able" to do this ; 
and shall He not do it, as His last act of mercy on the 
finally impenitent and unredeemed, if such there be at 
last who, from hopelessly perverted will, resist the 
whole appeal of the Divine holiness and love? 1 At 
best we can but "consider and bow the head" in awe 
and trepidation at such unspeakable guilt, sure that for 
such a soul " it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands 
of the Living God" (Heb. x. 31). 

V 

We pass to the question, What light does the teach- 
ing of Jesus and of His Apostles throw (when shorn of 

1 Jesus' use of the word Gehenna, if founded (as seems clear) 
on the contemporary uses of the word, suggests that it was the 
place of final retribution, rather than an intermediate state 
of purgation. His frequent reference to it (" criticism will not 
easilv negative its claim to belong to the original report of 
Christ's words "— Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 
p 357) is in keeping with this interpretation in every instance. 
And in each case, being " cast into Gehenna " refers to an act 
of God, not the automatic effects of evil on the soul. Accord- 
ing to Jesus, it is God, not sin, who in the end " destroys " 
the wicked. 



A Constructive View 293 

the Apocalyptic form into which this is so often cast) 
on the state into which those pass at death who are not 
thus hopelessly committed to evil ways? 

The answer must be frankly this, There is throughout 
the New Testament no direct light at all on this prob- 
lem. The Gospels and the Epistles have been examined 
with meticulous care by Universalists and Conditional- 
ists alike for any hint they may contain, but apart from 
a few texts which a sober exegesis pronounces irrele- 
vant to the case, they have been examined in vain. 
Professor Salmond shows, we think conclusively, in his 
chapter on this subject, that Jesus is entirely "silent on 
the subject of the Intermediate State." 1 The same is 
true of St. Paul, 2 and of the other Apostolic writers. 3 
They are all silent about it. But this fact may be inter- 
preted in two ways. Those who build on the assump- 
tion that in the New Testament we have God's final 
revelation on all possible aspects of human destiny are 
forced to the conclusion that there is no intermediate 
state of trial or probation for anyone after death. Is 
this assumption, however, <valid ? Is it not more rea- 
sonable and scientific to say that in this early literature 
only those aspects of the question are dealt with which 
were vital to the thought of the time ? The living prob- 
lem of the early Church was the attitude of those on 
whom the full light of the Gospel shone, and their ultim- 
ate fate in view of their acceptance or rejection of its 
claims. Nowhere, either in the teaching of Jesus or of 
His Apostles, is the fate of those dealt with who had 
never heard of the Gospel, or to whom it had not been 

1 Christian Doctrine of Immortality, pp. 339 et seq. 

2 Ibid., pp. 521 et seq. 3 Ibid., pp. 415 et seq. 



294 Faith and Immortality 

effectively preached. This problem, so vital to us in 
these days, had not then, nor for long afterwards, 
become a matter of urgent solicitude. This seems 
passing strange to us; none the less it was clearly so. 
"The burden of Scripture" — as Dr. Newman Smyth 
writes — "is the utter urgency of a right moral decision 
now before the Cross, and it holds up no promise here- 
after to any man who now determines himself against 
the Spirit of Christ/' But he goes on to say that there 
are " parts of the doctrine of the future " which " are left 
in obscurity," and suggests that " we have a moral right 
— a right guaranteed by these Scriptures — to take 
refuge from the perplexities of the final issues of evil in 
our own ignorance and the silence of Scripture : to find 
peace, comfort, and hope in the merciful obscurities of 
revelation." 1 We venture to think that more than this 
is legitimate. We have a moral right to consider all 
fresh problems that arise in view of the essential revela- 
tion of God in Christ, Even though nothing is said on 
many questions in the fragmentary records of that re- 
velation, it is the duty of the Christian thinker, under 
due limitations of modesty and reverence, to suggest 
such answers to all living problems as seem legitimate 
in the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. And an intermediate state of probation and 
education for all unripe and undeveloped souls seems to 
us a necessary corollary of that Gospel which reveals 
His boundless love for men, and His universal Saviour- 
hood on their behalf. 

1 The Orthodox Theology of To-day, pp. 115, 116, 125, 126 
(quoted in Salmond's Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 
pp. 521, 522). 



A Constructive View 295 

What are the conditions under which this will take 
place, we know not. The curtain of ignorance that 
hangs between us and the details of the other life is 
impenetrable. Nor is it needful for any of the moral 
ends of our earthly life that we should know them. The 
sources of faith are the safeguards of faith. If God 
provides the necessary conditions of an adequate proba- 
tion in the world to come for those of His children who 
have not come to an adequate knowledge of Him here, 
or who have not finally rejected Him here, we may be 
well content to leave them in His hands. 



VI 

The objection that is constantly being raised against 
such a theory of future probation as we have ventured 
to expound and defend is that it revives, in another 
form, the doctrine of Purgatory which was so sum- 
marily jettisoned by all Protestant Churches at the Re- 
formation. Such a charge implies two assumptions. 
In the first place it makes the authority of the Protestant 
Reformers final for all succeeding ages; and in the 
second place it suggests that our theory of probation 
and the Roman doctrine of Purgatory are practically 
identical. 

1. The notion that Divine authority belongs to the 
theological finding of the Reformers is one that cannot 
be tolerated any longer. These men found themselves 
face to face with a belief in a form of future probation so 
firmly interwoven with mischievous superstitious accre- 
tions, that all they could do was to throw over the whole 
scheme of eschatology with which these were associated. 



296 Faith and Immortality 

It was the system of indulgences which had really 
roused Luther's righteous wrath — a system invented in 
the interests of a corrupt and greedy hierarchy, 1 by 
means of which for their own purposes they played with 
equal success on the most selfish and the most generous 
instincts of the human soul : on the one hand encourag- 
ing wicked men to believe that they could escape the 
consequences of present sin by bequests for masses that 
would ameliorate their future punishment, and cajoling 
loving hearts, solicitous for their unsaved dead, to spend 
vast sums in the hope of shortening their stay in purga- 
torial fires, on the other. 2 By denying the whole doc- 
trine of Purgatory the Reformers succeeded in finally 
breaking down the influence of this immoral and de- 
grading belief. Having done so, it is time to ask 
whether in their zeal for the truth they did not uncon- 
sciously sacrifice a part of the truth itself. Further, 
such an attitude towards the Reformers, if carried out 
consistently, would have made all subsequent develop- 
ments in theological doctrine impossible, and bound 
Christian thought for ever in an icy barrier. We have 
not found any difficulty in breaking away from their 
views in other directions, as witness later developments 
of doctrine in relation to the Church, the Sacraments, 
the Incarnation, the Atonement, in dealing with which 
we have freely used the contributions of Roman theo- 

1 There is an old proverb which crystallises the situation at 
the Reformation into a sentence, " The fire of Purgatory boils 
the monk's saucepan." 

2 "The well-paid priest had the power of sending more 
quickly to Paradise any deceased person whose salvation might 
be somewhat doubtful to those left behind " (Petavel, The 
Problem of Immortality, p. 253). 



A Constructive View 297 

logians. Why should the eschatology of the Reformers 
alone remain sacrosanct from revision? It would per- 
haps surprise some of those who take up this point of 
view to find how far in other directions they have de- 
parted from the theology of the sixteenth century. The 
whimsicalities of the orthodox mind are sometimes hard 
to beat. 

2. But the simple formulation of a self-restrained, and 
(we believe) evangelical doctrine of future probation is 
in no sense a return to the Roman doctrine of Purgatory. 
We advocate no system of indulgences or of masses for 
the dead. There is no thought of softening the moral 
issues of this life for anyone on the ground that con- 
scious living in sin may be safely indulged in. On the 
other hand, we would give full force to the stern and 
terrible warnings so frequently heard on the lips of 
Jesus to those who dally with the brief and fleeting 
opportunities of this life in the poor hope that it will 
be possible afterwards to reverse their deliberate rejec- 
tion of His claims on them here. We have no soft 
words for such traffickers with the grace of God. Their 
doom is clearly announced by the gentlest yet most 
remorseless lips that ever spake of mercy and judgment. 
The chances of future probation we would plead for are 
not for these, but for those who are as yet unawakened 
through no inherent fault of their own to the meaning of 
life and of religion, or who have never had these pre- 
sented to them. The case of these is not dealt with in 
the sacred pages. It can only be envisaged in the light 
of the deep essential implications of the Gospel of 
Divine love. 



298 Faith and Immortality 



VII 

There is a question still remaining which is of vital 
and living interest to multitudes of anxious believers. 
Are we justified in offering up prayers for the dead who 
never made the great decision in this life? And even 
for those who did so ? 

This custom, reaching far back into the Christian 
centuries, was undoubtedly the germ out of which de- 
veloped the system of indulgences which Protestant 
thought has finally condemned as unscriptural and 
mischievous. It is, however, in no way organic to that 
custom. The free impulse of loving faith to pursue her 
vanished dead into the unseen world with the heart's 
goodwill and solicitude and prayers that they may be 
reinforced in their search for God, and find that salva- 
tion there which they may have missed here, is one 
thing; the traffic in magical rites and formal priestly 
prayers on their behalf is quite another. The evan- 
gelical conception of prayer is that of a spontaneous, 
earnest, profoundly personal outgoing of the soul in 
petition to God for a desired good ; it is something that 
can be shared, but not delegated; and he who joins 
with another in this high exercise must be as spon- 
taneous and earnest and personal as his comrade in the 
privilege. With the New Testament in our hand, we 
can never return to the Roman doctrine of Indulgences ! 

On the other hand, it must be freely allowed that 
there is no shadow or hint of such a custom in the 
Primitive Church, so far as its thought and life are 
mirrored in the New Testament. Judging by the re- 



A Constructive View 299 

cords, we should infer that such a thought had nowhere 
suggested itself to any of the writers, nor to those whose 
words or habits of thought they record. Even those 
who base their faith in such prayers on passages like 
Ephesians iii. 15 ("For this cause I bow my knees unto 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole 
family in heaven and earth is named," etc.), are importing 
into their interpretation a subjective element which a 
sober exegesis must disallow. We must put down the 
silence of Scriptural writers on this matter to the same 
reason as their silence on the question of future proba- 
tion — the problem had not as yet suggested itself to 
them, absorbed as they were in more pressing and 
imperative problems of their own. And for the same 
reason this silence must not be considered a barrier to 
the heart's impulses to deal quite freely with the ques- 
tion, now that it has arisen and become living and 
urgent for Christian believers. 

Granted the position taken up in this book, there can 
be no reason whatever for denying the validity of prayers 
for the dead. Why, if intercourse for our loved ones is 
often effectual while they are on this side of the narrow 
line that divides the living from the dead, should we 
doubt its power on their behalf when removed beyond 
that line ? Only if their final destiny is sealed at death. 
If, on the other hand, they are still capable of moral 
change there, then may we not send forth all the help- 
fulness of our prayers for them into the Unseen, where 
God reigns and loves and energises for their salvation, 
as He does here ? True, we scarcely know how to pray 
or what to pray for on their behalf. Many will, for this 
reason, find it impossible to formulate any detailed 



300 Faith and Immortality 

petition for them, or prefer to leave them wholly in the 
hands of their Maker and Redeemer. To many others 
this is growingly becoming a more and more difficult 
position. "The heart has reasons which the reason 
cannot understand," as Pascal profoundly said in an- 
other connection. Love, reinforced by faith, can over- 
leap many a barrier which neither love nor faith can 
surmount alone ; and this may well be one. 

During the long and weary months of this War thou- 
sands of devout fathers and mothers, wives, sisters, 
lovers, in all lands, have been besieging the throne of 
heavenly grace with passionate prayers for the safety 
and spiritual welfare of their dear ones at the Front. No 
one can put a limit to the prevailing influence of such 
prayers, nor what they mean for those on whose behalf 
they may rise as a sweet incense into the Unseen. Many 
such prayers have continued long after many a lad 
whose fate is unknown has passed into the Unseen. 
Have these prayers been useless and in vain ? Do only 
those count that were offered before the hour and article 
of death? If so, then indeed the question is closed. 
But who, save those who are hedged in by doctrinaire 
presuppositions of the finality of death, would venture 
on such a statement? And if not, why should not 
those prayers be continued in faith that, in some un- 
known way, they form a link between us and those who 
are for the time lost to sense, but who may still be 
united to us by the secret benefits of loving supplica- 
tions? Let those who feel thus follow their heart's 
instinct in trustful faith, whatever others may say. Nor 
can we pass judgment on those whose traditions and 
upbringing are too stubborn to enable them to break 



A Constructive View 301 

away. In this region of delicate feeling and shadowy 
intuition, we cannot lay down any rules or regulations 
for common guidance : all must follow the light within, 
in the secret place where the soul has its most intimate 
fellowship with the Father of Lights, who is also Lord 
of Death and the giver of immortality. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE HEAVENLY STATE 



11 I cannot doubt that they whom you deplore 
Are glorified, or, if they sleep, shall wake 
From sleep, and dwell with God in endless love. 
Hope, below this, consists not with belief 
In mercy, carried infinite degrees 
Beyond the tenderness of human hearts. 
Hope, below this, consists not with belief 
In perfect wisdom, guiding mightiest power, 
That finds no limit but its own pure will." 

Wordsworth : Excursion, Book IV, 



11 And tho* we wear out life, alas! 
Distracted as a homeless wind, 
In beating where we may not pass, 
In seeking what we shall not find — 

11 Yet shall we one day gain, life past, 
Clear vision o'er our Being's whole, 
Shall see ourselves, and learn at last 
Our true affinities of soul." 

M. Arnoli 



CHAPTER VI 
THE HEAVENLY STATE 

" The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, 
And the man said, * Am I your debtor ? ' 
And the Lord, * Not yet ; but make it as clean as you can, 
And I will lend you a better.' " 

SO far our investigations into the problem of human 
destiny beyond the grave have been marked by 
some hesitancy. Our affirmations have been tinged 
with uncertainty, our negations have been more or less 
dubious. For we were moving in a land of mists and 
shadows, where no clear light shines, and where no seer's 
foot has ever fallen firm and confident. That was 
because so far we had not touched the core and marrow 
of the Christian doctrine of Immortality, which is 
not a doctrine of mere survival, nor of mere judgment, 
still less of retribution and doom, but a clear and 
glorious Promise, God's Yea and Amen to the high 
aspirations of the climbing soul of man. The concep- 
tion of immortality brought to light in the Gospel is the 
assurance that for all whose hearts are set on the ideal 
fully realised in Jesus there is no death, but such a rein- 
forcement, and enrichment, and intensity of life beyond 
the grave as no language can describe, no imagination 
picture forth. This was the secret of Jesus, "the mys- 

305 20 



306 Faith and Immortality 

tery hidden from ages and from generations, but now 
made manifest to His saints" (Col. i. 26, 27); this was 
the " hope of glory," begun in foretaste here, fully to be 
revealed hereafter in the heavenly state; this was the 
reward reserved for them "who by patient continuance 
in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, 
even eternal life" (Rom. ii. 7). Not mere continuance of 
such a life, even at its best, as we now enjoy; but a full 
realisation of what comes to us here only in inspired 
moments, in ecstatic foreshadowings, in dreams and 
visions of the soul. That is what the Gospel was to 
Paul, and John and Peter, and that glad circle of be- 
lievers who were gathered into the first Christian 
Church. The Resurrection Life of Jesus was the morn- 
ing-star of this glorious day. This it was that set the 
seal on His promise, that where He was they should be 
also, and filled them all with such confidence that the 
best of them could say exultingly of his most poignant 
sorrows and sufferings that his "light affliction, which 
was but for a moment, worked for him a far more ex- 
ceeding weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv. 17) and made him 
long to be "with Christ," which was "far better." The 
Christian Gospel means many things ; at its last and its 
best, it means Heaven for the redeemed. 



I 

Alas ! what has become of this assurance of the early 
Church, and of all great ages of the later Church, that it 
has receded so far and become so dim to us all ? 

It is strange, but true, that the Christian Church has 
realised only at rare intervals in its long history the 



The Heavenly State 307 

splendour of this vision, and has lived under its in- 
spiration only by fits and starts. A few gifted and 
saintly souls have done so habitually, moving among 
their fellows as strangers and pilgrims, a little a colony 
of heaven" on earth, 1 because they had heaven in their 
hearts; and for a time they have infected others with 
their unworldly temper. But for the most part, and 
sometimes for long ages, the Church has almost forgotten 
its celestial destiny ; has lived more in fear of Hell than in 
hope of Heaven ; has laid up treasures on earth, when it 
ought to be enjoying in foretaste its inheritance above; 
has even made unholy compact with the pomps and 
powers of this lower world, as though its title to the 
skies were null and void. Stranger still, the ages of 
" otherworldliness " in the Church have always been ages 
of cleansing and progress for this world; the ages of 
its worldliness have been ages when this life has fallen 
into corruption and misery; as though to show that it 
is Heaven alone that unfolds the true values of earth, and 
that life here is only really worth living to those who 
treat it as preface and exordium to a Better ! 

There has been no period since that of the Apostles 
when the prospect and promise of the Heavenly Life 
has been so dimly felt, so uncertainly trusted by the 
whole Church, as during the latter half of the nineteenth 
century and the opening years of the twentieth. This 
present world has been rediscovered as the home of man 
during this wonderful time. Man has suddenly come 
to his earthly sovereignty; Nature has unfolded her 
secrets to him, has placed her forces at his disposal, has 

1 Phil. iii. 20 (Moffatt's translation). 



3c8 Faith and Immortality 

scattered her wealth at his feet; at long last, he has 
"come to his own." Dazed at the accession of power in 
his hands, intoxicated by the opportunities of sensuous 
satisfaction at his lips, he has drunk deep of draughts 
of this lower life, has conquered time and space, and has 
realised that it is possible to put centuries of experience 
into the brief span of his earthly existence. True, he has 
not really stretched that span beyond the allotted time, 
though he has begun to prate of a possible earthly im- 
mortality — of a kind — even for the individual. 1 And 
so the Heaven beyond the grave has faded into the far 
distance, and even good men confess that its golden 
promise has next to no place in their hierarchy of motives 
to true living. And what has been the result ? A 
civilisation in ruins; a war that is devastating a Con- 
tinent, and threatening to overwhelm the race in an orgy 
of suicidal strife ! For it is precisely the nation which 
has most thoroughly repudiated the Christian creed, 
has glorified the natural life as opposed to the spiritual, 
and has exalted earthly as distinguished from heavenly 
realities, that has plunged the world into this tragic and 
futile struggle. This war is the Nemesis of worldliness. 
It is therefore time that the Church of Christ hunted 
up its forgotten title-deeds, and revised its contract with 
the world that now is ; else there is small hope for either 
Church or world in the age before us. For the hope of 
every generation lies in the unworldly souls that leaven 
it with their high temper and their holy idealisms. 

1 See Metchnikoff's works. 



The Heavenly State 3°9 



II 

It is here pertinent to recur to a question already 
dealt with at some length in an earlier chapter. 1 Why 
has the life to come so largely lost its place as a source 
of religious inspiration and moral betterment? In ad- 
dition to the more general reason there unfolded, there 
is one other, which, in our judgment, accounts for not a 
little of the vagueness and helplessness of our present- 
day view of the future life. This is the prevailing con- 
ception of it as a disembodied state. Most of us no 
longer accept that pregnant line in the ancient creeds, 
"/ believe in the Resurrection of the Body? Finding it 
impossible to retain the traditional view of this tenet, 
which, indeed, had become quite incredible in the 
materialistic form it had taken in the " orthodox " mind 
of the last few generations, and forgetting that this was 
a degenerate type of thought, totally out of keeping with 
the faith as expounded by St. Paul in I Cor. xv. (" flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God"), we 
have fallen into the obvious fallacy of imagining the 
only alternative to be total disbelief. It is time this 
subject were thoroughly overhauled. We can here and 
now do little more than throw out a few suggestions. 

There can be no manner of doubt that the central 
difference between the later Jewish conception of im- 
mortality, as distinguished from, say, the Grecian, was 
its strong affirmation of the resurrection of the body. 
To the latter the great sorrow and tragedy of death was 
the fact that it meant the permanent separation of body 

1 See Part I., Chap. I. 



310 Faith and Immortality 

and soul. The world of the dead was the world of 
"shades," of disembodied spirits, condemned for ever 
to a futile and ineffectual existence, because they were 
for ever divorced from the body that gave life its ful- 
ness, its joy, its effectiveness. To the Greek, the real 
man is the man of flesh and blood, partaker of the 
tangible existence of earth, and what subsists in the 
hereafter is only an attenuated edition of the man." 1 
We have found that all ancient peoples had this funda- 
mental conception — the Hebrews, no less than the 
Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman. Thus, mere survival 
of physical death was not considered a boon by any of 
them. The Hebrew alone, with his loftier and purer 
conception of God, had the courage and faith to solve 
this dark riddle of destiny by boldly affirming for the 
righteous the reuniting (through the power of God) of 
body and soul at a future resurrection, thus opening up 
a prospect of re-entering into " fulness of life." This bold 
step, as we have seen, was taken by the Apocalyptic 
writers, and inherited by the contemporaries of Jesus. 
But what to them was a matter of hope and tentative 
faith suddenly became a glorious certainty to the 
Christian Church. This transformation of the tradi- 
tional belief was effectuated by the reappearance of Jesus 
from the dead, not as a disembodied spirit, but as an 
embodied personality — His Very Self and His Whole 
Self — integral, recognisable, complete. Whatever we 
to-day may think of that supreme event in history, and 
whatever difficulties we may find in the bodily aspect 

1 Salmond's Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 124. See 
the whole chapter on " Greek Beliefs,'' which fully illustrates 
the position taken up in the text. 



The Heavenly State 3 1 1 

of the resurrection of Jesus, there can be no manner of 
doubt that those who saw and communed with the Risen 
Lord were absolutely persuaded of this. They believed 
in the Empty Grave; they believed that in some mys- 
terious way His earthly body, transfigured into its 
spiritual equivalent, was an integral part of the great 
fact. And it was this that gave them their new, joyful, 
exhilarating conception of a resurrection life for them- 
selves. It filled them on one side with a sense of diffi- 
culty and bafflement. 1 It filled them on the other with 
a sense of triumph — that at last the great enemy of the 
race had been conquered, and that death, the grim 
separator of body and soul, was " swallowed up " in 
victory. Compare St. Paul : " For which cause we faint 
not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward 
man is renewed day by day. For we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a 
building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens" (2 Cor. iv. 16, v. 1). And St. John: 
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be; but we know 
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like 
Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John iii. 2). 
Till quite recently the Christian Church in all its 
branches accepted this solution of the dark riddle of the 
grave. It held that there would be a general resurrec- 
tion at which body and soul would be reunited in a 
mysterious but real sense, and the loss of this belief has 
greatly shaken and impoverished the hope of believers in 
a glorious immortality. 

3 The classic passage in i Cor. xv. 35 proves this. 



3 1 2 Faith and Immortality 

III 

For what clear conception can we have of a spiritual 
existence that is disembodied ? The power of abstrac- 
tion has done wonderful things for human thought; 
what it can never do is to enable us to realise the sur- 
vival of a concrete personality as a " disembodied " 
ghost. How true this is may be seen if we carefully 
consider the functions performed by the body in this 
life as the medium of expression for the soul. What 
function does our body fulfil for us ? 

In the first place, the body enables us to realise our 
self-id entity. It is the organ whereby we distinguish 
between our essential ego and our physical environment. 
By means of it, we move about and so are able to dis- 
tinguish between our integral self and the objects or 
persons who surround us. We see, we hear, we feel by 
means of our sense organs, and what we see and feel and 
hear is realised to be something other than ourselves. 
It is by the action and reaction of the embodied spirit 
and its environment that the child comes to distinguish 
itself from its surroundings and from other persons. It 
takes a year or two of constant movement to come to any 
effective sense of its self-identity, and many more to 
complete the process ; nor can we conceive of any means 
or method whereby we can maintain full self-conscious- 
ness except through the medium of an organism separ- 
able from its physical and social environment. 

Secondly, the body is the instrument whereby the 
soul is enabled to act effectively on its environment. 
Our feet give us the power of movement, our hands the 
power of manipulating our surroundings to our purposes. 



The Heavenly State 313 

The loss or mutilation of the limbs, by cramping our 
physical effectiveness, is always felt to be a supreme 
calamity, because it renders us physically so helpless, so 
dependent on others more fortunate. By means of 
tools, man's power over the environment is enormously 
increased ; but every kind of tool is but an extension of 
the hand or foot, or other bodily organ, and all are use- 
less unless the living and embodied person is there to 
direct their operations. 

Thirdly, all -possibility of mutual recognition and of 
communication between one person and another is de- 
pendent on the body. By physical presence and ges- 
ture, by voice and language, we share our individual life 
with others, know each other, and so become members 
of society. This can only be done to full satisfaction 
by personal (i.e., bodily) presence; the further we are 
physically removed from one another, the fainter and 
less real does this social intercourse become. In primi- 
tive times all communication between one person and 
another ceased when separated by distance, except 
through messages carried by a third person. A great 
extension of social intercourse took place with the in- 
vention of written speech, which enabled men to continue 
sharing in the thoughts of absent or dead persons — a 
process still more widely extended through the inven- 
tion of printing. In recent times the social life of 
humanity has been immeasurably enriched by such 
mechanical contrivances as the telegraph (static and wire- 
less), telephone, phonograph, and moving picture. Nor 
have we probably come to the end of these fresh instru- 
mentalities of intercourse. Ever and always, however, 
in the last resort, there are two or more embodied per- 



314 Faith and Immortality 

sons in communication with each other, the mechanical 
means of communication being but extensions of their 
organs of mutual intercourse. But all mutual inter- 
course ceases at death, which, by destroying the body as 
the soul's instrument, makes psychic communication 
between one person and another no longer possible. 

It is the sense that body and soul were separated 
finally at death which, as we have seen, rendered the 
future life so painful to the ancients, and made them 
dread profoundly the passage into the unseen world. 
True, their conception of the soul as a shadowy and 
attenuated facsimile of the body, enabled them to believe 
in a kind of continued self-identity of the soul in Sheol 
or Tartarus, 1 and in the possibility of its recognition by 
others; but they were all convinced of the helplessness 
and ineffectiveness of the soul's post-mortem existence. 
It was, on the other hand, the conception of a future life 
as an embodied state in which the " naked " soul was 
"clothed upon" by a spiritual body, 2 like that of Jesus, 
"who shall change our mortal body that it may be 
fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the 

1 Homer thus shows Ulysses, and Virgil shows Aeneas, upon 
their entrance into the other world, mutually recognising their 
old comrades, and recognised by them : 

" Thus side by side along the dreary coast 
Advanced Achilles and Patroclus' ghost — 
A friendly pair." 

Compare the story of the witch of Endor in 1 Sam. xxviii. 7-14 
(especially verse 14) and the vision of the monarch shades in 
the underworld pictured by Isaiah as recognising the shades of 
the Kings of Babylon, and rising from their thrones to greet 
him with mockery — " Art thou also become weak as we? 
Art thou become like unto us?" (Isa. xiv. 10). 

2 Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 36-38, 42-44, with 2 Cor. v. 1. 



The Heavenly State 315 

working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto 
Himself" (Phil. iii. 21), which permanently changed 
the conception of death from a dreadful prospect into 
a keen expectation for the Christian Church in all ages 
down to our own. We can thus understand how the 
modern attempt to conceive of the future life as a dis- 
embodied state (of which the simple person cannot by 
any stretch of imagination for any real conception, and 
which the most cultured minds only seem to be able 
to do by an exaggerated effort of abstraction) largely 
accounts for the present-day loss of interest in the life to 
come. We may attenuate our conception of spiritual 
existence as far as we please, it will always retain a dim 
relic of corporeality, for we have no experience whatever 
of any type of human existence that is not associated 
with form, and form implies "outlined content" of some 
kind. 

Nor is the idea of a " spiritual " body either material- 
istic or unscientific, as John Fiske has affirmed. 1 Speak- 

1 Dr. McConnell meets John Fiske's criticism of such an 
hypothesis as being " materialistic in character V with the 
statement : " This, I conceive, is precisely where its strength 
resides. It moves away from that phantasmal region of * dis- 
embodied ghosts ' and looks for the hope of continued exist- 
ence at the top of the hill, but on the line of the same path up 
which life has been climbing throughout the aeons " (Evolu- 
tion of Immortality, pp. 171, 172). From another and more 
distinctively religious point of view Professor Mackintosh 
writes thus : " The Christian mind has never been really cor- 
dial about a bare dogma of immortality of the soul. It has 
felt that personal life can be re-established on the further side 
only as spirit is invested by God's gift with a perfect organism. 
.... We imply body indeed when we speak of an immortal 
soul, for spirit is defined as soul only in relation to a body. 
One main reason of opposition to this in philosophic circles is 



3 1 6 Faith and Immortality 

ing purely from the scientific point of view, Professor 
Cope, in his Origin of the Fittest, in reply to the 
question, "Is there any generalised form of matter 
distributed through the Universe which could sustain 
consciousness ?" says : " The presumption is that such 
a form of matter does exist." Our present organism is 
conditioned by its earthly environment. The living 
principle has used the material ready to its hand, and 
has used it freely in all its forms. Our bones are solid; 
our brains, glands, and nervous tissues are semi-fluid; 
our blood and other juices are fluid; our breath is 
gaseous; and there are other still more tenuous forms of 
"matter" used up in the chemical, magnetic, and elec- 
trical energies that are resident within, or are constantly 
flowing in and out of, our physical frames. Life has 
laid these physical forces all under contribution in the 
interests of soul, with a freedom and skill that are mar- 
vellous. Under different conditions we may well be- 
lieve that the unique life-principle which animates our 
bodies would shape its organism differently. If, for 
instance, there are living beings in the planet of Jupiter 
or in Sirius, they must have bodies entirely gaseous in 
texture ; if on the moon, which has no air or water, they 
must be entirely solid; nor is there any logical reason 
for denying that such creatures may actually exist. 1 

obviously the underlying prejudice that body as such — not 
simply matter — is a debasing burden or limitation. But we 
may reasonably think of it as a principle of individuality as well 
as a serviceable medium of spiritual commerce, in the absence 
of which souls ' unclothed upon ' would share no life but 
their own " (Immortality and the Future, p. 166). 

1 This in opposition to Alfred Russel Wallace's theory to the 
contrary. See Man's Place in the Universe. 



The Heavenly State 317 

And in the spirit world it is quite conceivable that the 
ether, of which all the cruder forms of matter are built 
up, may provide a body for the soul of infinite tenuity, 
but of perfect adaptability for the purpose. 1 We have 
already been able to use the etheric vibrations for the 
extension of our physical senses to a distance in tele- 
graphy and telephony. It is thus puerile to suggest that 
what we can imperfectly do even in this life, through 
our clumsy (though very marvellous) mechanical con- 
trivances, is impossible for re-embodied souls under the 
finer conditions of spiritual existence in the unseen 
world. 

Is it idle to suggest that even in this life, if the soul 
were fully spiritualised, it would have the power of trans- 
forming our present bodies into something finer and 
more perfectly adaptable to its ends? Is the Biblical 
view that sin has interfered with the natural sovereignty 
of soul over body, and that even physical death is not 
so much an essential element of human experience as a 
falling back under the dominance of a law zvhich in a 
sinless world might have been transcended, a purely 

1 C/. Browning on the possible development in another life 
of such a soul as Michael Angelo's : 

" If such his soul's capacities, 
Even while he trod on earth — think, now, 
What pomp in Buonarotti's brow, 
With its new palace brain where dzvells 
Superb the soul, unvexed by cells 
That crumbled with the transient clay! 
What visions will his right hand's sway 
Still turn to forms, as still they burst 
Upon him? How will he quench thirst 
Titanically infantine, 
Laid at the breast of the Divine?" 

Easter Day 



318 Faith and Immortality 

fanciful conception? 1 This notion has haunted the 
mind of men from earliest times (cf. legend of Enoch) ; 
it is certainly strongly suggested in Paul's writings ; and 
the conception of Jesus, the sinless one, having passed 
through death, not in His own right, but as a free gift 
for others' redemption, and of His uprising from the 
dead in His own right (" Death could not hold Him " — 
Acts ii. 24; Moffatt's translation), bears out the idea. 
It has been ruled out by modern science, which only 
takes note of the factual; and modern theology has 
largely followed science here, possibly betraying her 
cause through an obsession. Doubtless "death is in- 
herent in human organisms, such as we now know them," 
to quote Professor Davidson; 2 "but that fact can sup- 
port no inference as to how death or disease would be- 

1 Cf. Prof. A. B. Davidson's Theology of the Old Testament, 
p. 516 : " Man is not considered in Scripture as a duality, but 
as a Unity, composed of elements ; and the principle of this 
Unity, the centre of it, is his moral relation to God. This 
binds all his parts into one, and retains his constitution entire 
as he came from God. The narrative beginning with chapter ii. 
of Genesis places man as there created before us in true rela- 
tions to God, and living; it describes how God called to man's 
consciousness these relations, concentrating them into a par- 
ticular point, and how He set before him death as the penalty 
of any change in these relations — * Thou shalt not eat ; in the 
day thou eatest thereof thou diest/ He ate and died. This 
was the penalty attached to eating of the tree. In the day man 
ate he died. He became mortal, in the sense that he must die. 
Death laid his hand upon him, and called him his own from 
that moment. From that moment he was dead in sin — dead, 
as the consequence of sin. He can be called dead in the 
language of Paul, who says of men who still lived, * The body 
indeed is dead, because of sin.' A parable; but who can tell 
whether it does not enshrine a truth?" 

* Theology of the Old Testament, p. 434. 



The Heavenly State 319 

have in the presence of a perfectly moral condition, and 
what would occur in the organism of such a being ; for 
the difference between the highest morality that exists, 
and a -perfect one, is a difference not in degree but in 
kind. . . . Scripture expressly recognises the two con- 
ditions of a perfect and an imperfect moral state, and 
teaches that the organism of human nature is not a 
thing under the governance of physical laws only, but 
is lifted up by the spiritual nature of man into another 
plane, and subject in its destiny to the operations of 
moral laws? Be this as it may, the New Testament 
represents the Resurrection of Jesus as on the one side 
a reward for His perfect obedience (Phil. ii. 8, 9), and, on 
the other, as a guarantee that through Him death was 
finally conquered, and that His own people were to share 
in that supernal victory, not in the mere sense of survival, 
but of survival in a re-embodied sovereign fulness of 
life. 

Further, is it fanciful to suggest that in this life of 
probation and moral experience a process is going on 
in the inner life whereby the soul is even now assimilat- 
ing itself with its spiritual environment, and shaping its 
spiritual body in accordance with the character and 
intensity of its spiritual activities ? Or, may we not 
hazard the conjecture that God is preparing for us a 
body "as it shall please Him," which will be the exact 
counterpart of the soul, the appropriate expression of 
its essential quality, and which awaits us in the Unseen ? 
May it not be part of the reward of the virtuous, and of 
the judgment of the vicious, that we are all thus uncon- 
sciously determining in the present life the organic 
environment which awaits us in the after-life? Even 



320 Faith and Immortality 

the present intractable body is more or less plastic under 
the shaping influence of the inhabiting soul. As we 
grow older, character puts its stamp more and more 
legibly on our bodily frame, and especially on our facial 
expression. Love and purity irradiate the commonest 
countenances, lust and anger and spleen tend to debase 
the handsomest features. With the finer and more 
obedient form of "matter" with which the soul will 
probably be associated in the life to come, this rapport 
between the spirit and its organism may well become 
closer and more perfect, so that through all veils of 
humility and hypocrisy the inner self will be revealed 
in its essential quality, and be aided or hampered by 
its organism, which will become more and more its wil- 
ling servant, or its tyrannous master, according as we 
here come to sure self-governance or descend to lawless 
indulgence of the lower passions. If any reader demurs 
to this suggestion as too speculative, we would at least 
ask him to consider whether it is not legitimate specula- 
tion, in line with the process of assimilation that goes on 
everywhere between organism and function, and that it 
is consistent also with the deep intuitions of our Faith ? 



IV 

We are now in a position to deal more adequately 
with the New Testament: conception of the heavenly 
state of the blessed dead. 

I. // is an embodied state. Those who have died in 
the Lord are no mere phantasmal existences; they are 
not " pure spirit " divorced from all relation to the great 
world of matter, which in this life gives the soul its 



The Heavenly State 321 

Organism and its opportunity ; they are not disembodied 
ghosts, wandering in the void. Such a conception is 
fit only for those ages which associated matter with the 
evil principle, as something alien from God and resistant 
to His will. Matter is a part of God's own Universe, 
and even here its highest function is to be the servant of 
spirit. It is God's "self-expression in objectivity" ; it 
is the condition of the realisation of our own subjective- 
objective life ; it is our medium of communication, recog- 
nition, and fellowship with other souls ; it is the avenue in 
which the soul becomes effective for power, influence, 
and creative energy. Why should we rule out all rela- 
tion in the after-life to that great, glorious, orderly, pro- 
gressive half of reality \ without which we could have no 
consciousness, no individuality, no progress in know- 
ledge, no power, no sense of sovereignty ? It is not that 
we may be separated from the material universe in the 
spirit world that we pass through the gate of death, but 
that we may come into more intimate and perfect rela- 
tions with it; that we may be released, if we live well 
here, from its limitations, raised above its tyranny, made 
free of its abundant and (in this life) scarcely suspected 
beauty and potency. We cannot here forecast the pre- 
cise nature of the new relation to it which is possible to 
"just men made perfect"; but we may be sure that it 
will be something which will no longer hinder the full 
entrance of the soul on its use and control of the mate- 
rial order for spiritual ends. "Here in the body pent" 
we blunder and plunge darkly, in blindness and ignor- 
ance, amid the dimly known laws of matter and spirit ; 
there we shall find ourselves in a "new heaven and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness," and love, 

21 



322 Faith and Immortality 

and power. What fresh secrets of knowledge and 
power we shall master at once, and what others we shall 
gain only after long ages of earnest inquiry into the 
hidden mystery of the Universe, we know not. We may 
rest assured that what science feebly gropes after in this 
world will come to us in the other full-orbed and splen- 
did; what philosophy fails to master here will there 
unfold into light; what religion now staggers after, in 
a vain attempt to grasp and hold, will there at last come 
into our full possession. "Here we know in part and 
we prophesy (speculate, intuitionise, foresee) in part. 
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which 
is in part shall be done away. For now we see in a 
glass, darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; 
but then shall I know as I am known" (i Cor. xiii. 9, 
10, 12). 

2. // is a state of recognition and fellowship with 
other embodied souls. The question perpetually rises 
to our lips, " Shall we know our loved ones in heaven ?" 
This trouble is the fruit of the "disembodied" notion 
of the future life ; it could scarcely suggest itself to those 
who believed in the "spiritual body." The scriptural 
conception of the future life is securely based on the 
belief in the continuance of personality in all its dis- 
tinctiveness beyond the grave, in its recognisability, 
and in its capacity for fellowship with kindred souls. 
This is not so much taught as assumed to be self-evident. 
" If it were not so, I would have told you." In the refer- 
ences to "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"; in the reap- 
pearance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration ; in the parable of Dives and Lazarus ; in our 
Lord's sayings, "I go to prepare a place for you, that 



The Heavenly State 323 

where I am ye may be also"; "their angels do always 
behold the face of My Father which is in heaven"; 
"there is joy in heaven over every sinner that re- 
penteth"; and many others, it is implied beyond ques- 
tion. When Heaven is opened before the dying Stephen, 
he is represented as seeing and instantly knowing his 
Divine Master; and Paul bids the Thessalonians not 
" sorrow concerning them that are asleep, as those who 
have no hope," clearly suggesting that they shall meet 
and know each other again. The brilliant and impres- 
sive pictures of the heavenly life that teem in the Book 
of Revelation all carry home the same idea. Heaven is 
not a state of isolated individualism, lost in an impene- 
trable and lonely secrecy; it is a society > with free, 
joyous, happy intercourse between all who are in 
spiritual affinity. It is a commonwealth, a city, a 
church, a kingdom — all social conceptions. " But ye are 
not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that 
burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and 
tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of 
words ; but ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the 
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an 
innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly 
and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, 
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just 
men made perfect, and to Jesus " (Heb. xii. 1 8-24). This 
is the prospect to which all the New Testament writers, 
filled with the contagious spiritual insight of their 
Master, looked forward with intense expectancy beyond 
the dark river of death. It was the radiant cloud on 
Time's far horizon into which prophecy and Apocalyptic 
melted, the "consummation devoutly to be wished," 



324 Faith and Immortality 

which filled them with "joy unspeakable and full of 
glory." For those who knew Jesus there were no dark 
terrors hanging over the grave, but a light reflected from 
His face, in which all terror vanished, as the thunder- 
cloud dies at the touch of the returning sun. 

And though we may freely and finally renounce the 
Apocalyptic forms and images in which the forecast of 
the heavenly state is clothed in Scripture, there is no 
reason why we should grow doubtful of the validity of 
our Hope, or even refrain from expressing it in an 
Apocalyptic of our own. The Apocalyptic of the 
Hebrew has many elements uncongenial to the modern 
mind, which lives in a different circle of thought and 
has interests distinctive to itself. " Streets of gold," and 
" walls of jasper," and "gates of pearl," and such naive 
and childlike images, convey nothing to us to-day. 
Nevertheless the fundamental idea of the old Apoca- 
lyptic is one that is grandly human, and strikes vital 
roots into the thinking of our own time. The dream of 
a regenerated society in which the broken, limited, and 
baffled relationships of earth are renewed, transfigured, 
and carried up to their highest possibilities in an ideal 
world, has haunted the human soul from the time of 
Plato onwards. The Utopias of philosophers, philan- 
thropists, and reformers in all generations— what are 
these but a part of the great Apocalyptic literature of 
the world, all negligible as to their form — which is but 
the reflection of the social aspirations of particular ages 
and epochs of thought — but all essentially true in their 
motive, intention, and insight into the possible which 
some day shall become the real? What are these noble 
thinkers, with their passionate longing after moral order 



The Heavenly State 325 

and progress, their profound love for righteousness, 
their stubborn faith in progress, but the vanguard of that 
heavenly host of which Faber sings in that finest of all 
Apocalyptic hymns : 

11 Hark, hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling 

O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore, 
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling, 
Of that new life when sin shall be no more. 
Angels of Jesus, 
Angels of Light, 
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night?'' 

3. The heavenly state will thus be a life of progres- 
sively perfected ethical and spiritual relationships. 

This is implied by the social character of that life. 
This was clearly grasped even in prophetic and es- 
pecially in Apocalyptic times. In the Messianic King- 
dom, amid all the varieties of conception through which 
it passed, "two factors, and only two, were indispens- 
able to its realisation. First, it must be a community of 
Israelites, or of these together with non-Israelites. 
Secondly, it must be a community in which God's will 
is fulfilled. If we lose sight of either factor, our view 
of the Kingdom is untrue." 1 Throughout the Bible, as 
we have seen, there is no hint of a merely individualistic 
salvation; it is always a boon that can only be fully 
realised in a fully ethicised society. With Jesus, to enter 
into life and to enter into the Kingdom are synonymous. 2 
We may add a third factor which is implied in the 
other two. It will be an ethicised society which has left 
sin with all its individual disabilities and social dis- 

1 Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future 
Life, p. 83. 

2 See Part II., Chap. II., pp. 25, 28. 



326 Faith and Immortality 

turbances behind. Heaven will not be "earth over 
again H — with evil, therefore with conflict, therefore with 
possible defeat, awaiting us there as here. " Such a con- 
ception is wholly inadequate to the premonitions of 
Christian faith." 1 Even here the Apostle refers to a 
state in which the soul can be spoken of as "dead to 
sin" (Rom. vi. 11), and if this in the absolute sense is 
proleptic in its reference, it can only be in reference to 
the condition of the redeemed in Heaven, who are to 
be made "alive unto God through Jesus Christ our 
Lord." // we cannot look forivard to a Heaven without 
sin, there is no Heaven to look forward to. 2 

But sinlessness is one thing and perfection another; 
and perfection is not necessarily attained at death. 
Nor is spiritual perfection itself a static conception, to 
be attained at a single step, and then possessed eternally. 
We can conceive of a sinless society which is very im- 
perfect, and in which neither the individual nor the 
community have more than tasted of the sublime and 
endless possibilities waiting to be revealed and realised. 
Indeed, we may say that not till both the individual 

1 See on this point the penetrating and profoundly Christian 
treatment of Professor Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future 
Life, pp. 154-157. 

a " The most formidable objection to older views on this 
point has reference to the notion of sanctification as completed 
at a stroke, but the point is, I think, fairly met by a further 
argument. On any theory which does not hold that sin in the 
redeemed is everlasting, it is difficult to see how sudden and 
cataclysmic moral transformation somewhere can be avoided. 
Let the soul retain sinful tendencies in the new life, and even 
there nothing better is in store for it than a regressus in in- 
finitum. . . . Sinlessness at death, in other words, is unques- 
tionably a difficulty for thought, but the difficulty of sinfulness 
after death, is, on the whole, much greater " (ibid., p. 156). 



The Heavenly State 327 

and the social environment in which he lives have done 
with sin can these implicit moral possibilities begin to 
realise themselves in any effective sense. Sin is a retard- 
ing and disabling force, hindering the flight of the soul 
towards its ideal life; only when it is shed and left 
behind does that flight properly begin. This concep- 
tion of the heavenly life as a state in which at last the 
individual and the community are free to unfold their 
latent perfections is one that meets a profound passion 
in the soul for an ever-growing and ever-perfecting social 
life. It lends a quickening plot-interest to the prospect 
of immortality, and inspires an expectancy as to what 
victories and attainments await us beyond the grave 
which is in keeping with all that is best in us here. And 
it is in line with all we know of God's method in Nature, 
Providence, and Grace. 

4. May we not venture one step further here, and 
suggest with confidence that the Heavenly State is one 
in which the highest energies of the redeemed com- 
munity will be directed towards the salvation of the 
unredeemed? 

This will not appeal to those who still hold the doctrine 
that death ends all probation, and automatically fixes the 
destiny of all mankind. But to all who accept the position 
developed in this book it must make a strong and vital 
appeal. For if the vast majority of men and women 
pass into death in a totally unripe and unprepared — 
but not finally hopelessly unrepentant — condition, can 
we conceive it of those who have mastered the secret of 
Jesus, and been enfolded in the embrace of His justify- 
ing and sanctifying grace, that they will be content to 
leave their less fortunate and less developed brothers 



328 Faith and Immortality 

and sisters to wander in helplessness and darkness, with- 
out ministering to their needs in a spirit of unbounded 
love and service? So, surely, would they be "none of 
His" whose life was given on the Cross for man's re- 
demption, and who, according to all we know of Him, 
must spend Himself to all eternity in saving energy on 
behalf of the wandering and the lost. If missionary 
enthusiasm is the surest touchstone of the Christian 
temper on earth, and in the after-life there be untold 
multitudes who have not yet found Christ, will — nay, 
must — not the " heavenly hosts " be aflame for service in 
the interests of those multitudes ? We know not what 
are the hidden conditions of life in the Beyond, but we 
may be sure that under any conceivable conditions 
every one who has been quickened and purified by the 
saving power of Christ will ask for no higher or happier 
function than to go forth to the " spirits in prison," that 
the same ineffable boon may be imparted to those who 
missed it here. And will not such service bring into 
play those highest qualities of sacrifice and devotion 
which it is the Gospel's function to elicit and develop ? 
What better Heaven could there be than one whose 
central occupation will be to enlarge its borders, carry 
the spiritual warfare even to the uttermost confines of 
Hell itself, and bring home trophies of conquest to the 
"great white throne"? Here, at least, is a prospect of 
blessedness of very different quality from the mediaeval 
conception of "redeemed" souls, selfishly glorying in 
their own bliss, and finding it heightened into ecstasy 
at the prospect beneath them of a multitude of "lost" 
souls tortured in endless fires ! From that horrible 
travesty of what redemption is we have long since, thank 



The Heavenly State 329 

God, been emancipated by the ever-swelling tide of 
humanitarian sentiment that has swept over the world. 
But not till we have replaced it by a worthier conception 
will its baneful influence pass altogether away, and the 
worthiest of all is that here suggested. If we could 
comfort every sorrowing and agonised mother with the 
thought that she can look forward to a future in which 
she may continue her prayers and her ministry of love 
in behalf of her lost son in the world whither he was 
hastened before his time by bullet or shell, typhus or 
accident, it would bring fresh hope to many a despair- 
ing heart ! Nor would those who have died here in 
apparent final rejection of the call to a new life be left 
outside the appeal of human as well as Divine per- 
suasion. Haply, what failed here may prevail there. 
Surely no holier, happier Heaven can be imagined than 
one in which the most perfect spirits would pour forth 
their energies into the larger stream of the Divine in- 
fluence in behalf of all still outside the Kingdom ! 

And may we not think of these spirits as working 
ceaselessly for us also who are still on this side of the 
great separating Flood of Death ? Can we conceive of 
them as less interested, less anxious, less active in their 
ministry on behalf of those they love on earth than they 
must be for those on their own side ? True, we have no 
scriptural hint of this, and we have seen how readily 
such an idea can be materialised or at least lessened in 
spiritual value by such a doctrine as the Roman wor- 
ship of saints, and the custom of offering prayers to the 
creature which belong solely to the Creator as His right. 
None the less may we be sure that what they can do they 
will, nor ever cease to work on our behalf because for the 



330 Faith and Immortality 

time mutual fellowship between them and us has been 
interrupted. 

5. Finally, the Heavenly State will be one of ever- 
deepening and heightening fellowship with God as re- 
vealed in Jesus. "That where I am ye may be also" 
was the richest promise made by Him to those He was 
about to leave. "To be with Jesus," to be drawn into 
ever closer intimacy of spirit with Him, and with God 
in Him, to be assimilated ever more nearly into His 
likeness through the contagion of His immediate 
presence — this was the prospect that filled Paul, and 
John, and Peter with endless happiness and joy. They 
had known Him on earth in the lowliness of His human 
incarnation; they would know Him in Heaven in the 
splendour of His triumph over sin and death. That 
was all they craved for ; but it was enough, since it must 
carry with it all else they would need, or be capable of 
becoming. For to know and to have eternal fellowship 
with Jesus must mean to know God and to "enjoy Him 
for ever." To those who knew Him on earth He brought 
an ever-deepening sense of the presence and power of 
God in Nature, Providence, and Grace; to know Him 
above will carry this process into regions unimaginable 
to us here and now. This is the Beatific Vision which 
Dante speaks of as the last of the ascending circles of 
revelation to which he was conducted by Beatrice (the 
spirit of Heavenly Truth), which was the centre of that 
Love, the Primum Mobile, "which lives at the heart of 
things, and which moves the whole Universe according 
to its own perfect will." "The Light Eternal, which 
only in itself abideth, which only is able to understand 
itself, is the Light of Love, the Fire of Love, fusing 



The Heavenly State 331 

together all fragments of reality, all beings, all attri- 
butes, all relations, into one perfect whole, binding to- 
gether all the scattered leaves of the Universe into one 
volume of Love." 

44 O wondrous grace, by which I dared to fix 
My raptured gaze upon the Eternal Light 
Until my power of vision was consumed : 
Within those depths of light I saw unfolded 
The scattered leaves of all the Universe 
In one vast volume bound by power of Love." 1 

These, as we conceive it, are the essential and abiding 
elements of truth in the revelation of Heaven, that is, of 
the state of the blessed Dead who are the eternally 
Living, which beats at the heart of the Apocalyptic 
visions of the New Testament. The Christian Church 
for long ages failed to distinguish the perishable form 
from the inner content of that revelation, having its 
imagination bound hand and foot in the gyves and 
fetters of a mechanical literalism. With the breaking-up 
of that literalism it fell into disheartenment, and gave 
up the substance with the shadow, taking refuge in an 
agnosticism concerning the future life which was as 
crude and futile. Now that the historical method of 
interpretation has come to its own, we are saved from 
both horns of this unreal dilemma, and are able to open 
our hearts with renewed confidence to the permanent 
spiritual teaching of the Bible. It is time this were 
done in the interests of faith, that the uplifting power of 
the vision of Heaven which filled the early Church and 
the choicest spirits of the Church in all ages, with such 
joy and expectancy, and made them so fruitful in ser- 

1 Open Roads of Thought, p. 284. 



332 Faith and Immortality 

vice and so happy in worship, may be ours also. The 
joy they had belongs equally to us, if we will but enter 
on our heritage; so do the incentives, hopes, consola- 
tions, inspirations which enabled them to enjoy a fore- 
taste of Heaven while still on earth, and gave them that 
spirit of " otherworldliness " which makes the best out 
of this world because its highest function is to be a 
preparation and discipline for a better. 



INDEX 



The reader should also consult the Analysis of Contents (pp. xiii-xviii). 



Advent Hope, the, 169/., 173 
Agnosticism inconsistent, 14 
Alger, 229, 258, 290 
Animism, 50 
Annihilation, 257 /. 
Anti-Christ, 171, 181 
Apocalyptic literature, 130 ff., 

324 
Arnobius, 258 
Arnold, Matthew, 216, 225 

Barnardo, Dr., 287 
Barrett, Sir W. F., 79, 82 
Bergson, Henri, 97 
Biological argument for Con- 

ditionalism, 266 ff. 
Body and soul, 312 ff. 
Brooke, Rupert, 3 
Brown, J. Baldwin, 29, 265 
Browning, Robert, 40, 317 

Charles, Professor R. H., 116, 
125, 130/., 134, 137, 152 /., 
154, 17L I 75» 179, 208 

Church, Dean, 208 

Clarke, J. F., 241/. 

Conditional Immortality, 29, 

257 ff. 
Conscience, 209 
Consciousness the only reality, 

65 
Consciousness impervious, 67 
Conservation of Energy, 56 
Cope, Professor, 316 
Copernican astronomy, 28 
Creation of values, 100 

Daily Telegraph correspondence, 

25 

Dante, 330 



Davidson, Professor A. B., no, 

121 /., 318 
Death in relation to probation, 

222 ff. 
Determinism, the new, 243 /. 
Divine decrees, 223 
Dualism of mind and matter, 69 

Emerson, R. W., 36, 84 /. 
Epiphenomenalism, 56 
Eschatological School, 30 
Eternal life, 135, 151 /. 
Eternal values, 41 
Exile, influence of, on religion 
of Israel, 120 ff. 

Fairbairn, A. M., 196 
Fechner, 65, 68 
Fichte, 95 
Fiske, John, 315 
Freedom, 98 

Garrod, Mr. H. W., 156, 204 
Gehenna, 135, 159, 261 
Gordon, G. A., 29, 243, 245 

Hades, 117, 159 

Harrison, Frederick, 40 

Heathen, fate of, 226 ff., 286 /. 

Heaven, 284, 305 ff. 

Hebrew doctrine ci Immor- 
tality, 112 ff. 

Hell, 284 

Henotheism, 114 

Horwill, H. W., 4 

Human sovereignty in Nature, 97 

Huxley, 47, 57 

Identity of mind and matter, 64 

Immortality in Old Testament, 
112 ff 



333 



334 



Index 



Immortality in teaching of 
Jesus, 141 ff. ; in Paul, 168 ff. ; 
in Johannine writings, 180/.; 
in Peter, 183; in New Testa- 
ment (Summary), iS^jf. See 
also List of Contents 

Immortality vital to Christian 
faith, 14 

Immortality, prevalent in- 
difference towards, ix, 19, 22, 

24> 35 
Incarnation, essential function 

of, 143 /• 
Incompleteness of present life, 

93 
Indulgences, Romish theory of, 

296/. 
Influence, immortality of, 39 
Interaction of mind and matter, 

69 
Intermediate state (cf. Proba- 
tion), 293 

James, William, 55, 65, 68, 77, 

79 
Jesus, teaching of, 141 ff., iboff., 

248 ff. 
John Scotus Erigena, 240 
Judgment, 158, 207^. 

Kennedy, Professor H. A. A., 

170, 176 
Kingdom of God, 136, 152 /., 

155, 200, 204 

Larger Hope, 29 

Lazarus and Dives, parable of, 

i54> 2 9o/. 
Leibnitz, 64 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 47, 79 /. 
Lotze, 96 
Luther, Martin, 296 

Mackintosh, Professor H. R., 
208, 211, 262/., 276, 326 

Man, his littleness and greatness, 
103 

Man, his place in Nature, 87, 101 

Martineau, Dr., 95 

Maxwell, Professor Clark, 47 



McConnell, W. S. D., 182, 230, 

266 ff., 315 
McDougall, Professor, xii, 52, 

63, 69 
Mellone, Professor, 22 
Messianic Kingdom, 128 /., 

134, 325 (cf. Kingdom of God) 
Mill, John Stuart, 39, 252 
Mind, its dependence on brain, 54 
Monism, 66, 70 
Monolatry, 114 
Multiple personalities, 29, 78 
Miinsterberg, Professor, 41, 68 
Myers, F. W. H., 76, 79/., 82 

Neander, 253 /. 

Origin and validity, 50 
Osier, Dr., 22 

Otherworldliness, x., 25, 203, 
3<>7» 332 

Paradise, 159 

Parousia, 156, 172, 174, 181 

Pascal, 105, 300 

Paul. See Index of Scripture 

Passages 
Paulsen, 68 
Personality and the Conditional 

Theory, 264/. 
Petavel, 296 
Plato, 51, 95 

Plutarch on Annihilation, 257 
Positivism, 40 

Prayers for the Dead, 298 ff. 
Pre-existence of the soul, 95 
Present life, moral significance 

of, 200 ff., 319/. 
Present life, its value and 

interest, 31 
Probation, human, 215^. 
Prophets, the, and Immortality, 

ii 9 #. 
Psychical research, 79 
Psychical Research Society, 24, 

74. 79 
Psycho-physical parallelism, 63, 

65 

Purgatory, 295 ff. 
Pythagoras, 51 



Index 



335 



Recognition in future state, 313, 

322 
Restoration, universal, 239 ff., 

285/. 
Resurrection of the body, 309 /. 
Resurrection in teaching of 

Jesus, 157; in Paul, 173 /; in 

John, 181 
: Resurrection of the righteous, 

134, 177 
Resurrection of Jesus, influence 

of, 165/. 
Revelation, Book of, 182 
Richter, Jean Paul, 37 

Sadducees, 118, 145 

Salmond, Professor S. D. F., 
159, 251, 258, 282, 292/., 310 

Salvation, 218 ff., 286/. 

Schiller, Dr., 24 

Schweitzer, Professor, 149 

Science, definition of, 45 

Science, distinct from philo- 
sophy, 46 

Science, rooted in faith, 86 

Science, effect on belief in 
Immortality, 28 

Self-consciousness, its meaning, 

93 
Sheol, 117/., 260 
Sidgwick, Henry, 80 
Sin, 203 

Smyth, Newman, 294 
Social Immortality inadequate, 

38 

Socinus, Faustus, 258 



Soldiers in face of death, 20, 23 

Soul and body, 53, 70 

Soul, implied in self-conscious- 
ness, 73 

Soul in Greek philosophy, 51 

Soul, Hebrew conception of, 
116 

Sovereignty, divine, 244 

Spencer, Herbert, 64 

Spinoza, 64 

Spiritual body, the, 176, 312 ff. 

Stephen, Fitzjames, 44 

Subconscious self, 75, 78 

Tartarus, 117 
Tennyson, 10, 40 
Teraphim, 116/. 
Thoreau, 34 
Thornton, L. S., 205 
Tylor, Professor, 50 
Tyndall, Professor, 57 

Universalism, 29, 239^., 285/. 
Unrepentant, fate of the, 289 
Urgency of Gospel appeal, 206 

Values bound up with personal- 
ity, 1 01 
Vitalism, 58, 72 

Wallace, A. R., 316 

War, the European, xi., 1 ff. 

230/., 300, 308 
White, Edward, 29, 264/. 
Whitman, Walt, 2, 63 
Winstanley, E. W., 261 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



Genesis. 



xv. 15 

xxxi. 19, 30-35 
xlix. 29-33.. 
1. 25 



Exodus. 



xx. 2-6 



1 Samuel. 



xix. 13-16 . , 
xxviii. 7-14 



xxin. 24 



2 Kings. 



Job. 



PAGE 
117 
117 
117 
117 



117 



117 

314 



117 



ix. 24 
xiv. 1-15 


• 123 
126 


xix. 25-27 
xxiii. 16 


126 
. 123 


Psalms. 




viii. 4 

xlix. 

Ixxiii. 


. 103 

• *33 

• *33 


ECCLESIASTES. 




ix. 4, 7, 9 /. 


126 


Isaiah. 




ii. 2 


129 


xiv. 10 


- 314 


xxvi. 19 . . 
lvii. 15 


• 134 

• 152 



Jeremiah. 
xxxi. 31-34 .. 124, 152 



Ezekiel. 

xviii. 3 /. . . 

xviii. 20/., 24, 25-30, 31 /. 

xxxiii. 11 . . 

xxxviii. 6, 16/. 

Daniel. 



Matthew. 



vu. 11 
viii. 11 /. 
x. 21 
x. 32 /. 
xi. 21-24 
xi. 27 
xiii. 38 
xiii. 43 
xvi. 27 
xviii. 34 
xx. 28 
xxi. 43 
xxii. 31 /. 
xxiii. 37/. 
xxv. 32 
xxv. 34 
xxvi. 38 



Mark 



ix. 43-45, 47 
x. 15 
x. 17 
xii. 24 /. 
xvi. 15 



Luke 



vi. 23 
x. 12 
xii. 48 
xiii. 34 



124 
125 
242 
132 



135 



252 

153 

274 

158 
158 
148 

153 
153 
158 
154 
274 
153 
145 
158 
158 
156 
274 



156 
154 
156 

157 
276 



158 
158 
226 

158 



336 



Index of Scripture References 337 



xvi. 24 


. 




135 


xiii. 9, 10, 12 


322 


xvii. 20 /. . . 


. 




153 


xv. 22 


174 


xviii. 24 


. 




156 


xv. 25-28 . . . . 175 


, 178 


xix. 41-44 . . 


. 




158 


xv. 35 


311 


xx. 35 


. 




158 


xv. 35-49 


176 


xxi. 34 


. 




158 


xv. 36-38 


314 








xv. 42-44 


314 


John. 






xv. 50 


309 


iii. 18/. .. 




181 


xv. 51 /. 1 


74/. 


v. 28 /. 




*35 


, 181 


xv. 53 


175 


vi. 54 


t 




135 


xv. 58 


175 


xi. 4 


. 




274 


xvi. 22 


174 


xi. 25 

xii. 26 /. . . 


• 




274 
181 


2 Corinthians. 




xiv. 2 /. 


» 




181 


i. 14 


176 


xiv. 18/. .. 


. 




181 


iv. 16 


3ii 


xiv. 21, 23. . 


. 




181 


iv. 17 


306 


xvii. 3 


. 




*35 


v.i .. .. 311 


314 


xxi. 22 


. 




181 


v. 1-8 


175 


xxi. 23 


. 




274 


V. 2 /. 


135 








v. 2-4 


176 


Acts. 






v. 10 


176 


ii. 24 
x. 35 


•• 


3i8 

186 


Galatians. 




xxiv. 15 




*35 


vi. 7/- 

vi. 8 


176 
176 


Romans. 






Ephesians. 




ii. 6 






176 






ii. 7 






306 


i. 10 


179 


ii. 12 




186 


, 226 


i. 23 


178 


vi. 11 




. . 


326 


ii. 6 


177 


vi. 13 






177 


iii. 15 


299 


vi. 23 




, . 


177 






viii. 19 






177 


Philippians. 




viii. 38 






274 


i. 6 


178 


ix. 21 






223 


i. 10 


178 


xi. 25-32 . . 






176 


i. 20 


274 


xiv. 10 






176 


i. 23 


178 


xiv. 12 




176, 


210 


ii. 8/. 


319 








ii. 16/ 


178 


1 Corinthians 






iii. 20 


307 


iv. 1 /. 






210 


iii. 21 


315 


iv. 3 /. 
iv. 5 






209 
174 


Colossians. 




vi. 14 






174 


i. 16 .. .. 177, 


179 


vii. 26, 29 . . 






174 


f*7, 


177 


xi. 26 




• • 


174 


1.19/. 

22 


179 



3 38 Index of Scripture References 



i. 26/. 




306 


xii. 18-24 


. • • • 


. . 


323 


ii. 12 


. . 


177 


xiii. 17 






210 


iii. 1 




177 










iii. 4 


. . 


177 




1 Peter. 






iii. 25 




176 


iii. 19 


183, 


226 


285 


1 


Thessalonians. 




iv. 6 
iv. 10/. 


183, 


226 


285 
210 


ii. 19 




172 










iii. 13 
iv. 6 




172 
173 




2 Peter. 






iv. 15 


171 


172 


iii. 11, 12, 


14 




185 


iv. 17 




173 










v. 3 




173 




1 John. 






v. 23 




172 


ii. 18 






181 


2 


Thessalonians. 




ii. 28 
iii. 2 






181 
311 


i. 9 


. . 


173 


iii. 14 






291 


ii. 1-4 




172 


iv. 3 






181 


ii. 8 


171 

2 Timothy. 


172 




2 John. 






i. 10 





167 


8 .. 


.. 


•• 


181 




Hebrews. 




Revelation. 






ii. 3 


. • . • 


185 


ii. 10 






274 


x. 31 




292 


XX. 12/. 


. . 




135 



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